Economic conditions for minibus usage in a multimodal feeder network

Ali Gholami and Afshin Shariat Mohaymany

Transportation Planning and Technology, 2011, vol. 34, issue 8, 839-856

Abstract: The introduction of minibuses into the transit fleets of some cities makes it more important than ever to investigate the economic and operating conditions of these vehicles for various transit and paratransit services. A high performance transit system is of great interest, owing to its desirable characteristics. However, it is not feasible to establish and use such a system all over a city. It is therefore necessary to support a high performance transit system with other modes to extend its area of operation (owing to higher demand) and also to connect those areas that are not covered by the high performance system to it. This paper considers the use of minibuses in the design of metro line feeders and to characterize the economic domain in which it is efficient to use them in a feeder network. Based on results from ant colony optimization, the performance measures of minibuses are compared with those of conventional buses to help make decision makers aware of the use and role of these vehicles. The study contradicts the common belief that, since minibuses require similar driver costs to those of conventional buses, it is not economical to use them in a transit fleet; in fact, it is shown that minibuses can displace conventional buses in some situations in a feeder network.

Date: 2011
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03081060.2011.613594 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:transp:v:34:y:2011:i:8:p:839-856

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GTPT20

DOI: 10.1080/03081060.2011.613594

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Planning and Technology is currently edited by Dr. David Gillingwater

More articles in Transportation Planning and Technology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().