Improvement of regularity of urban public transport lines by means of intervals synchronization

Abstract

Summary. This article describes a way of synchronization of communication lines in urban public transport. In the literature, no comprehensive methods have been presented to ensure the regularity of running public transport vehicles, except specific cases of this problem, which have little practical application. It demonstrates how this problem is difficult. In the article, the problem was presented more broadly – running of vehicles in different intervals, in lots of common fragments of routes, and running periods was considered. The objective function for this problem was defined, and then the algorithms to solve it were discussed. In the next part of the work, a model was verified by making synchronization of the timetables of selected lines in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski. Three lines from the twelve were included in the analysis. The routes of these lines created seven communication bundles (i.e. the common fragments of the routes) for which synchronization was required. The results of synchronization (obtained by an author software) were new departure times of the lines from their start stops. Finally, they were confronted with the existing timetables, which confirmed the usefulness of the proposed method.