Simulation-based design of multi-period bus headways under the influence of electronic bus station boards

This paper proposes a bi-objective multi-period bus headway setting problem while considering the influence of electronic bus station boards on passengers’ choice behaviour. A non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGAII) based local search algorithm is developed to find the approximate Pareto front in terms of two objectives (i.e., expected average travel time of passengers and fleet size). A bus network simulation model is built to capture the complex interactions among bus stops, vehicles, and passengers. Experiment results conducted on Mandl’s network show that the proposed solution method is more capable of adapting the random passenger arrivals. The comparison of solutions with and without electronic bus station boards suggests that (i) the electronic bus station boards do not always exert a positive effect on passenger travel time; (ii) and the bus arrival information can positively affect the route choice behaviour of passengers only when the fleet size is relatively large.