Optimizing public transport transfers by integrating timetable coordination and vehicle scheduling

Transfer optimization in public transport (PT) networks can be achieved through coordinated timetabling and vehicle scheduling. Traditionally, the coordinated timetabling problem is solved first before proceeding to the vehicle scheduling problem. The integration of these two problems can help further reduce the total operation cost and...

An exact optimization method for coordinating the arrival times of urban rail lines at a common corridor

The trips of a high-frequency urban rail line are typically planned with the aim of achieving even time headways. This results in reliable services for each urban rail line, where successive trips have the same time headway. Maintaining even time headways for each service line has significant advantages for the passengers of the line, but it...

Bus Network Design and Frequency Setting in the Post-COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of London

A transit network design frequency setting model is proposed to cope with the postpandemic passenger demand. The multiobjective transit network design and frequency setting problem (TNDFSP) seeks to find optimal routes and their associated frequencies to operate public transport services in an urban area. The objective is to redesign the...

A review of public transport transfer synchronisation at the real-time control phase

We perform a systematic review of real-time control strategies for transfer synchronisations in public transport. In particular, we review inter-station and intra-station control measures that can be applied in near real-time, including vehicle holding, stop-skipping, speed control, short-turning, rescheduling, interlining, rerouting, and...

A review of public transport transfer coordination at the tactical planning phase

While transferring between public transport services has a negative impact on the level-of-service, it is an inevitable feature of public transport networks. Transfer coordination can help reduce passenger transfer waiting times and improve service connectivity. In this paper, we systematically review the literature on transfer coordination...

Optimal frequency setting of metro services in the age of COVID-19 distancing measures

Public transport is one of the most disrupted sectors of the COVID-19 pandemic with reported ridership drops up to 90% in majorly affected countries. As many government authorities strive to partially resume activities, public transport operators are in an urgent need for models that can evaluate the impact of different social distancing...

At-stop control measures in public transport: Literature review and research agenda

In this literature review, we systematically review studies on public transit control with a specific focus on at-stop measures. In our synthesis of the relevant literature, we consider three perspectives: (1) the mathematical models of the proposed methodologies; (2) their complexity; (3) their applicability in real-time operations and their...

Robust Network-Wide Bus Scheduling with Transfer Synchronizations

Travel time and demand disturbances lead to unreliable bus operations and missed passenger transfers. This study formulates the multi-line synchronization problem as a robust min(i)max problem that considers the fluctuations of the travel and dwell times of bus trips. Given the infeasibility of the multi-line synchronization problem in...

Public transport planning adaption under the COVID-19 pandemic crisis: literature review of research needs and directions

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has greatly impacted public transport ridership and service provision across the world. As many countries start to navigate their return to normality, new public transport planning requirements are devised. These measures imply a major reduction in service capacity compared to the pre-COVID-19 era. At the time of...

Timetable Recovery After Disturbances in Metro Operations: An Exact and Efficient Solution

This study proposes an exact model for timetable recovery after disturbances in the context of high-frequency public transport services. The objective of our model is the minimization of the deviation between the actual headway and the respective planned value. The resulting mathematical program for the rescheduling problem is nonlinear and...

Multi-constrained bus holding control in time windows with branch and bound and alternating minimization

This work proposes a periodic bus holding control method where the bus holding times of all running trips are computed simultaneously within each optimization time period; thus, increasing the coordination among running buses for avoiding bus bunching. This paper considers the adverse effects of the bus holding control in the in-vehicle...

A cost-minimization model for bus fleet allocation featuring the tactical generation of short-turning and interlining options

Urban public transport operations in peak periods are characterized by highly uneven demand distributions and scarcity of resources. In this work, we propose a rule-based method for systematically generating and integrating alternative lining options, such as short-turning and interlining lines, into the frequency and resource allocation problem...

Reliable frequency determination: Incorporating information on service uncertainty when setting dispatching headways

Frequency setting requires the determination of the dispatching headways of all bus lines in a city network and constitutes the main activity in the tactical planning of public transport operations. Determining the dispatching headways of bus services in a city network is a multi-criteria problem that typically involves balancing between...

Network-wide synchronized scheduling of public transport services

Bus line timetabling is a part of the tactical planning phase which consists of<br/>the following stages: (i) frequency settings; (ii) timetable design; (iii) vehicle<br/>and crew scheduling ([7], [3], [1]).<br/>Timetables are usually determined with the objective of minimizing pas-<br/>senger waiting times at stops [4]. Several studies have...