THE PRELIMINARY DESIGN OF MANY-TO-FEW DIAL-A-BUS SERVICES

Dial-a-bus is a term used to describe a form of demand activated road-based public transport. A common type of dial-a-bus service is one which links a service area to a few major trip attractors. This is known as a "many-to-few" type of operation and such an operation normally has no fixed routes, bus stops or timetables. In order to design such a service to operate without fixed stops, a method is required for estimating the time required to collect or set-down given numbers of passengers in a particular service area. This report provides estimates of the distances to be travelled to connect different numbers of collection or set-down points in service areas of different sizes and shapes. This information allows the round-trip time, the required vehicle capacity and hence the productivity of the dial-a-bus service to be estimated for an assumed level of demand. Mean tour distances, and standard deviations have been calculated for three different operating strategies for service areas of a number of sizes and shapes. /Author/TRRL/

• Corporate Authors:

  Transport and Road Research Laboratory (TRRL)

  Wokingham, Berkshire  United Kingdom 
• Authors:
  • TUNBRIDGE, R J
  • Mitchell, CGB
• Publication Date: 1977

Language

• English

Media Info

• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: 21 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bus stops; Buses; Demand; Demand responsive transportation; Economics; Estimates; Length; Operations; Paratransit services; Public transit; Standard deviation; Telephone; Transportation; Transportation planning; Travel demand; Travel time; Trip length; Vehicle capacity
• Old TRIS Terms: Dial-a-bus
• ITRD Terms: 1157: Community transport; 285: Demand (econ); 1157: Dial a ride; 697: Journey time; 6488: Length; 744: Public transport; 390: Telephone
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Economics; Planning and Forecasting; Transportation (General); I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00168140
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Transport and Road Research Laboratory (TRRL)
• Report/Paper Numbers: TRRL Lab. Rpt. 789 Monograph
• Files: ITRD, TRIS, ATRI
• Created Date: Jun 28 1978 12:00AM