Improving Resilience of Bus Bunching Holding Strategy through a Rolling Horizon Approach

Providing public transportation with quality service is critical to attracting more passengers to the system. However, high-demand routes are prone to the so-called bus bunching-a tendency of buses to group as a consequence of variations in travel times and demands. Bus holding is applied to overcome this effect. In this study, we present a novel method for bus holding in which the control law is based only on the buses' position using a computationally efficient rolling horizon approach. The method uses similar inputs as linear control approaches while not increasing significantly the computational time. On the other hand, the method overcomes a key weakness of the linear control approach thanks to the explicit constraint handling that always ensures the control action effectiveness. Simulation experiments in a validation case and a model-specific for a bus rapid transit line in Curitiba, Brazil, showed a reduced holding time and improved resilience, delivering more than 20% reduction in delay time accounting for the on-board and station delays.

Automated summary

The study introduces a novel bus holding method based on the position of buses, which effectively reduces bus bunching and improves system resilience. The method significantly decreases delay time and enhances effectiveness by explicitly handling constraints, offering more than 20% reduction in overall delay time.