Optimization of bus service with a spatio-temporal transport pulsation model

Abstract

With the rapid urbanization, the transportation system, especially the bus system, plays an increasingly prominent role in city planning. However, the current bus evaluation model usually focuses on just one aspect either spatial or temporal. Inspired by “Pulsation Analysis”, this study presents a new approach for evaluating Service Level of Bus as well as Demand for Public Transport based on both spatial and temporal aspects of the bus trips, called “Public Transit Pulsation Analysis”. The transport pulsation assessment model which assesses the supply side and the demand of community for bus model which calculates the demand side, are combined to optimize the bus frequency settings in this approach. The proposed method is tested on a real case study in Tianjin, China, which implies its usefulness in evaluating the service level and improving the service quality of the bus system by 17.6%. As well as developing a bus frequency optimization model, this study also demonstrates its real-world application of “Pulsation Analysis” for decision-making in city planning.