Coordinated Control Strategy for Multi-Line Bus Bunching in Common Corridors

Xuemei Zhou, Yehan Wang, Xiangfeng Ji and Caitlin Cottrill
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Xuemei Zhou: College of Transportation Engineering, Key Laboratory of Road and Traffic Engineering of the State Ministry of Education, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Rail Infrastructure Durability and System Safety, Tongji University, 4800 Caoan Highway, Shanghai 201804, China
Yehan Wang: College of Transportation Engineering, Key Laboratory of Road and Traffic Engineering of the State Ministry of Education, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Rail Infrastructure Durability and System Safety, Tongji University, 4800 Caoan Highway, Shanghai 201804, China
Xiangfeng Ji: Department of Management Science and Engineering, School of Business, Qingdao University, 62 Keda Branch Road, Laoshan District, Qingdao 266000, China
Caitlin Cottrill: Department of Geography & Environment, School of Geosciences, St Mary’s Building, Elphinstone Road, Aberdeen AB24 3UF, UK

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 22, 1-23

Abstract: Improving the sharing rate of public transportation is an important content for the sustainable development of urban transportation. However, bus bunching, a common phenomenon during transit operation, makes negative effects on reliability and service level of the bus system. In most urban centers in China, many bus lines usually serve in a corridor. Different buses may interact with each other in the corridor, which may aggravate the bus bunching. However, previous studies on bus bunching focused on single bus service. In addition, with the popularization of bus data acquisition and the maturity of data processing methods, the accuracy of bus bunching research meets more opportunities. In this paper, we proposed a holding strategy based on two-bus cooperative control. A simulation was carried out after preliminarily processing and analyzing the bus operation data of Foshan, Guangdong City. In the simulation, we compared the performance of three different scenarios, which are before control strategy, under the strategy for a single bus line and under the coordinated strategy for multiple bus lines. We contrastively analyze the results of the two strategies from different aspects. The results show that in aspects, such as holding a frequency, holding time, the total running time and the influence on the other bus line, the cooperative holding strategy manifests better. It illustrates that it is meaningful to do such a research on the effect of corridor service on bus bunching and add this effect into traditional holding strategy to build a multi-bus cooperative control strategy. The results have important theoretical significance for enriching and completing existing theory and methods of transit system and practical value for improving the service level and attractiveness of buses, increasing the share rate of public transportation, and thus, promoting the sustainable development of cities.

Keywords: bus bunching; common line; coordinated control strategy; bus big data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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