Flexible-Route Versus Fixed-Route Bus Networks Under Spatially Heterogeneous Demand

While bus systems are traditionally designed with fixed routes, this work presents an alternative flexible-route bus network, in which buses travel within predetermined areas in response to trip demand in order to provide door-to-door service. The main advantage of this system is that passenger access time to and from transit stops is removed. This paper considers a heterogeneous passenger demand distribution and designs a hybrid system that includes both hub-and-spoke and grid network features. While designing the optimal route layout and service operation, continuum approximation is used to reduce the computation burden and formulate the problem in terms of a few decision variables. Considering different demand levels and several patterns of spatially heterogeneous demand distributions, the authors compare the performance of flexible transit and fixed-route transit in terms of combined agency and user costs, and the maximum vehicle occupancy. It is found that demand heterogeneity gives rise to a larger cost-saving opportunity for flexible-route transit than the fixed-route transit. As a result, the flexible-route transit is superior under a wider range of demand levels under heterogeneous demand than under homogeneous demand.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP050 Standing Committee on Bus Transit Systems.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Petit, Antoine
  • Ouyang, Yanfeng
  • Smith, Ryan
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
• Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 20p
• Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bus routes; Bus transit; Costs; Demand responsive transportation; Optimization; Passengers; Routes; Travel demand; Vehicle occupancy
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01590120
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 16-0534
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 11 2016 3:38PM