Designing limited-stop bus services for minimizing operator and user costs under crowding conditions

Mohammad Sadrani, Ahmad Reza Jafarian-Moghaddam (), Mohsen Aboutalebi Esfahani and Amir Masoud Rahimi
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Mohammad Sadrani: University of Isfahan
Ahmad Reza Jafarian-Moghaddam: University of Isfahan
Mohsen Aboutalebi Esfahani: University of Isfahan
Amir Masoud Rahimi: University of Zanjan

Public Transport, 2023, vol. 15, issue 1, No 4, 97-128

Abstract: Abstract Dwell time is the amount of time required for performing boarding and alighting activities at stops. Under peak-load conditions, the dwell time can significantly increase due to a higher friction between on-board passengers when alighting and boarding. The influence of on-board crowding on increasing dwell time is indisputable. Herein, we develop a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model to optimize limited-stop patterns for bus services to minimize user and operator costs. The number of non-stop consecutive buses authorized to skip a station and in-vehicle crowding conditions are explicitly considered in our modeling framework. The benefits of limited-stop bus services are mainly overestimated in previous studies that ignore such operating conditions. Moreover, a genetic algorithm is developed to solve the problem in real-world cases. The findings show that the implementation of a limited-stop bus service can reduce in-vehicle travel times for passengers and operating costs for bus agencies in all-demand cases. Nonetheless, it can increase waiting times for users whose origin or destination stations are skipped due to the implementation of limited-stop services. Thus, the desirability of a limited-stop service can decrease with the growth of the demand level.

Keywords: Public transport; Rush hours; In-vehicle crowding; Dwell time; Limited-stop service; Genetic algorithm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C61 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s12469-022-00307-2

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