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A self-coördinating bus route to resist bus bunching

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  • Bartholdi, John J.
  • Eisenstein, Donald D.

Abstract

The primary challenge for an urban bus system is to maintain constant headways between successive buses. Most bus systems try to achieve this by adherence to a schedule; but this is undermined by the tendency of headways to collapse, so that buses travel in bunches. To counter this, we propose a new method of coördinating buses. Our method abandons the idea of a schedule and even any a priori target headway. Under our scheme headways are dynamically self-equalizing and the natural headway of the system tends to emerge spontaneously. Headways also become self-correcting in that after disturbances they reëqualize without intervention by management or even awareness of the drivers.

Suggested Citation

  • Bartholdi, John J. & Eisenstein, Donald D., 2012. "A self-coördinating bus route to resist bus bunching," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 481-491.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transb:v:46:y:2012:i:4:p:481-491
    DOI: 10.1016/j.trb.2011.11.001
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Daganzo, Carlos F., 2009. "A headway-based approach to eliminate bus bunching: Systematic analysis and comparisons," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 43(10), pages 913-921, December.
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    4. Arnold Barnett, 1974. "On Controlling Randomness in Transit Operations," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 8(2), pages 102-116, May.
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    6. Mark D. Hickman, 2001. "An Analytic Stochastic Model for the Transit Vehicle Holding Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(3), pages 215-237, August.
    7. Daganzo, Carlos F. & Pilachowski, Josh, 2011. "Reducing bunching with bus-to-bus cooperation," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 267-277, January.
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