Improving Resilience of Bus Bunching Holding Strategy through a Rolling Horizon Approach
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 147, Issue 10
Abstract
Providing public transportation with quality service is critical to attracting more passengers to the system. However, high-demand routes are prone to the so-called bus bunching—a tendency of buses to group as a consequence of variations in travel times and demands. Bus holding is applied to overcome this effect. In this study, we present a novel method for bus holding in which the control law is based only on the buses’ position using a computationally efficient rolling horizon approach. The method uses similar inputs as linear control approaches while not increasing significantly the computational time. On the other hand, the method overcomes a key weakness of the linear control approach thanks to the explicit constraint handling that always ensures the control action effectiveness. Simulation experiments in a validation case and a model-specific for a bus rapid transit line in Curitiba, Brazil, showed a reduced holding time and improved resilience, delivering more than 20% reduction in delay time accounting for the on-board and station delays.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, or codes generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request.
Acknowledgments
This paper and the work described were sponsored by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) under the Systems and Modeling for Accelerated Research in Transportation 2.0 (SMART 2.0) Mobility Laboratory Consortium, an initiative of the Energy Efficient Mobility Systems (EEMS) Program. The second author is supported by CAPES-Brazil.
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 147 • Issue 10 • October 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 10, 2020
Accepted: Jun 18, 2021
Published online: Aug 11, 2021
Published in print: Oct 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Jan 11, 2022
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