Incremental Bus Schedule Design: Combining Limited-Stop and Local Bus Services
One of the major disadvantages of bus service, making it an unattractive choice for commuters, is long invehicle times resulting from frequent stops. Limited-stop bus services, like those successfully operated in cities such as Bogota, Chicago, Montreal, New York City, and Santiago, however, have the advantage of shorter in-vehicle times experienced by passengers.
In our work, we seek to modify a given bus schedule on a particular route by optimally reassigning some number of (local) buses, as opposed to using additional buses, to operate a limited-stop service. We present an optimization model to determine: (1) the bus stops along a route to be served by a limited-stop service; and (2) the frequencies of the limited-stop and the local services that maximize total user welfare. Through empirical results obtained using real-world data, we provide comprehensive discussions of model behavior, quality and practicality of solutions, and insights into limited-stop bus service design.
