Zone Scheduling of Urban Bus Routes

A method is developed using dynamic programming for determination of optimal division of a bus route into zones, and allocation of buses to those zones. Such zone scheduling strategies are appropriate for bus routes with heavy orientation of riders to a common destination. An illustrative example demonstrates that substantial improvements in service and vehicle productivity are possible with zone schedules, and describes the properties of optimal solutions under varying conditions. A very significant finding is that the optimal zone structure is relatively independent of the number of buses used.It is also significant that the computational requirements for the procedure are quite modest.