Formulation and Optimization of Multiline Schedule Considering Transfer in an Uncertain Environment

The quality of the bus schedule affects the level of public transit service. It is considered the randomness of inter-station travel time and the actual situation of passengers’ stagnation in the process of the bus running, under the scenario of two intersecting lines transferring at the same station. To optimize the bus schedule, an improved model is proposed. Field data are studied to test the proposed method, which takes 311 Road and 7 Road in Changsha city as an example, and the passenger swiping data of two intersecting lines were processed. Lastly, the probability distribution of travel time between adjacent stations was fitted. The particle swarm optimization algorithm is presented to solve the model. The analysis results show that the adjusted bus schedule reduces the waiting time of passengers by 7.18%. The empirical study shows that the bus schedule optimization model can effectively shorten the total waiting time of passengers.