Modelling bus bunching along a common line corridor considering passenger arrival time and transfer choice under stochastic travel time

Wang, Zhichao and Jiang, Rui and Jiang, Yu and Gao, Ziyou and Liu, Ronghui (2024) Modelling bus bunching along a common line corridor considering passenger arrival time and transfer choice under stochastic travel time. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 181: 103378. ISSN 1366-5545

Abstract

This study examines bus bunching along a common-line corridor, considering crucial factors underexplored in existing literature, such as stochastic travel times, passenger arrival patterns, and passenger transfer behaviours. We first develop a bus motion model that captures the interaction between bus trajectories and passenger movement. Then we formulate a reliability-based passenger arrival time choice and a transfer choice model to characterise passengers’ behaviours. Afterwards, the bus motion model and the passenger choice models are integrated, and a Method of Successive Averages type iterative algorithm is developed to obtain stable passenger arrival patterns and transfer choices. Numerical experiments are carried out on a hypothetical network followed by a case with real-world data. Our findings demonstrate that a high transfer demand could amplify the propagation of bus bunching across lines along the common-line corridor. Meanwhile, a 50% increase in transfer demand leads to a 24%–30% rise in headway fluctuation. Furthermore, our results suggest that non-uniform passenger accumulation patterns can restore headway regularity as a result of coordinated passenger movement and bus motions, thus alleviating the persistent deterioration in bus bunching.