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For most ultralong bus lines, low punctuality rates and vehicle bunching are two main challenges. One potential strategy to solve these two problems is to split an ultralong line into two or three shorter lines according to historical passenger flow patterns as well as other presetting objectives and constraints. Thus, in this paper, a multiobjective optimization model is first established in consideration of both passenger flow distribution and coline metro networks. Then, the optimal truncated stop is determined by estimating the model results generated by enumerating each potential bus stop derived from related metro stops. The nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) is applied to solve the model efficiently. A case study conducted on a real bus line associated with metro networks in Beijing, China, demonstrates the efficiency of the optimization strategy adoption in terms of operating cost and passenger travel time, even with a slight increase in passenger cost. Besides, the multivehicle type is also referred in the experiments to verify economic efficiency to reduce operational costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel model for optimizing limited-stop bus corridor services with consideration of varied payment modes and different trip purposes. In the proposed model, the bus dwell time at a stop is dependent on the fare payment modes and the number of passengers getting off and waiting at the stop while those with the similar trip purpose are grouped into one user class. Given an origin–destination (OD) passenger trip matrix and a set of candidate bus lines serving a corridor, the proposed model is to minimize the total social cost that consists of the cost to the bus operator and the cost to the passengers. In the formulation of the optimization problem, a weighting parameter is adopted to balance the operator cost and the passenger cost. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the importance of considering passenger flow impacts on bus (and passenger) travel times in the proposed model. We also investigate effects on the optimal limited-stop services (e.g., short-turn, skip-stop, and express) taking into account the choice of fare payment modes (e.g., on-board fare collection including payment by cash, magnetic strip or smart card, off-board fare collection) and different values of travel time due to passenger trip purposes. It is shown that the off-board payment mode would be more efficient in a high-demand corridor, that more passengers prefer to express and skip-stop services rather than normal regular services in the four collection systems, and that different limited-stop service plans should be used for different periods of the day in response to temporal variation in OD passenger travel patterns. The intellectual merit of this paper is not the seemingly obvious conclusions but that the proposed model can handle the problem of limited-stop bus corridor service design with the consideration of fare payment mode choice and trip purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a newly designed modified multiport interleaved flyback converter (MMPIFC) to transfer the photovoltaic (PV) power to the DC bus of the parallel-connected multilevel inverter-based shunt active power filter (SHAPF). The proposed modified multiport interleaved flyback converter (MMPIFC) is designed to interconnect N number of input power sources into the DC bus of the SHAPF to fix the problems with the partial shadow and improve the SHAPF's ability to compensate. Compared to the commonly used interleaved flyback converter (IFC), the proposed MMPIFC has a larger boost factor toward the DC voltage input. The flow of power between the different power sources and SHAPF is controlled by varying the duty ratio of the main switches. The working principles of the proposed MMPIFC-operated PV-SHAPF are explored in this paper, and essential design concerns are highlighted. A prototype model with 1 kVA, 400 V, and 50 HZ is built and tested under various conditions to validate the theoretical analysis, design, and control method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to continuous urban sprawl, large-scale bus network design has become a major challenge in urban transport planning. The continuous increase in urban population and scale makes the factors considered in the urban route network design increasingly complex. Contemporary public transportation network design problems are based more on efficiency goals such as the accessibility and comfort of the transportation network, which increases the difficulty of analyzing the problem. Bus network design is not only an NP-hard (nondeterministic polynomial) problem but also a multivariable and multiobjective problem. This paper focuses on the bivariate and multiobjective bus network design problem of route generation and station selection. This paper proposes an algorithm called the Pseudo Force Field. By combining the idea of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and the properties of the force field, a feasible route generation scheme is provided for the design of the bus network. The algorithm does not need to determine the end station and has a high degree of completion of the demand. This solves the problem of the selection of terminal stations in large-scale road network design. On this basis, the article combines Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Pareto frontier to provide a new route optimization algorithm and proves the effectiveness of the algorithm. The model has achieved theoretical results in the design of the bus route network in the megacity of Shenzhen, China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IT system of manufacturing enterprises usually has many problems, such as complex industrial software, different development languages, diverse communication protocols, and complex operation environment. Cloud service bus (CSB) technology based on service model encapsulates various applications existing in enterprises by means of the integration of cloud service bus and micro services, which can realize the rapid cloud migration and deployment of heterogeneous industrial application software. Theoretically, after the production system is connected to CSB, it can be arranged arbitrarily by service choreography technology to produce any possible products. However, in the context of industrial Internet, the production system connected to CSB corresponds to the equipment, materials, personnel, and other resources on the production line one by one. These production nodes need to consider the production capacity and cost of production service nodes and the output value of the whole production network, and cannot be combined arbitrarily. Therefore, when integrating production service nodes, we should not only consider the technical integration, but also consider whether the production conditions support this integration. To solve the problem of production node integration in CSB, a dynamic collaboration model of production network based on cloud service bus is proposed in this paper. The model takes the capacity, cost, and production relationship of production nodes as constraints, and the overall efficiency of production network as the optimization goal. The model can calculate the new creation, modification, deletion, and other scheduling operations of production line services in real time and give the production plan with the highest resource utilization and the greatest value in the current production network. The model can improve the rationality and economy of service choreography and give full play to the value of production network. Taking an enterprise with 11 production nodes and 5 production lines as an example, this paper discusses in detail how to use this model to calculate the optimal production organization scheme and the maximum output value of the enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to explore the bus operating state of the city bus passenger corridor, taking the minimum bus operating cost and passenger travel cost as the objective function, taking passenger flow demand and operating income as the constraint, and considering the average speed change of the bus line in the bus corridor at different times. This paper proposes a dynamic optimization model of bus route schedule based on bus Integrated Circuit Card (IC Card) data. The optimization variable is the departure frequency of the candidate lines. To solve the model, a dynamic departure interval optimization method based on improved Genetic Algorithm (GA) was designed under different decision preferences. The method includes the calibration of generalized cost functions for passengers and bus companies and grasps the characteristics of bus operating speed changes and the design of departure strategies under different decision preferences. The validity and applicability of the proposed method are verified by a numerical example. We mainly carried out the following work: (1) Dynamic analysis of the time dimension of the bus departure interval takes into account the changes in passenger time characteristics during peak periods. (2) Seven schemes of weight ratio of passenger waiting time cost and bus operation cost were designed, and the departure intervals with different benefit orientations of passengers and operators were discussed, respectively, so as to select the corresponding departure schemes for decision makers under different decision preferences. The results show that (1) the total cost of the 7 different weighting schemes is lower than the actual value by 6.90% to 18.20%; (2) when decision makers need to bias the weight to the bus company, the weight ratio α : β between passengers and bus company is 0.25 : 0.75 which works best. The frequency of departures has been reduced by 6, and at the same time, the total optimized cost is reduced by 18.2%; (3) when decision makers need to bias the weight to the passengers, the weight ratio α : β between the passengers and bus company is 0.75 : 0.25 which works best. The frequency of departures has been increased by 19, and at the same time, the total optimized cost is reduced by 17.7%; and (4) when decision makers consider passengers and bus companies equally, the weight ratio α : β between passengers and bus companies is 0.5 : 0.5, the optimization cost is the closest to the actual cost, the optimization cost is reduced by 6.9%, and the frequency of departures has been increased by 5. The results show that the model in this paper provides a new idea for the information mining of bus routes in the research based on the bus IC Card data and provides an effective tool for the management of different operation decision preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is practically no published work that considers distribution network use of system (DUoS) charges as a price signal in the day ahead‐market, thus failing to establish a trade‐off between the DUoS charges and the energy procurement costs. This paper presents a new approach to optimal design of a day‐ahead pricing mechanism for managing distribution network congestion caused by renewable generation. The proposed concept of day‐ahead pricing is designed to minimize customer electricity bills taking account of line power constraints resulting from increased penetration of renewable generation. It is assumed that each user is equipped with controllable appliances and a smart meter enabling two‐way communications between suppliers and their customers. Suppliers employ an hourly demand side management strategy which considers the price signal from distribution network operators (DNOs), distributed generations (DGs) and wholesale market. A weighted average DUoS charge approach is applied in this paper, allowing DNOs to send a cost reflective use of system charge to electricity users in different locations based on their hourly predicted day‐ahead power consumption. An optimum day‐ahead pricing mechanism has been developed for DGs to manage their renewable resources to achieve revenue reconciliation and maximize generation output. Finally, power suppliers can optimally manage the controllable appliances that installed in each end user and balance the energy consumption from the main grid and DGs to minimize the electricity price. Several case studies have been conducted with a modified IEEE‐33 bus distribution network, where a large‐scale nonlinear optimization programming algorithm is applied to solve the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When multiple bus vehicles send priority requests at a single intersection, the existing fixed-phase sequence control methods cannot provide priority traffic request services for multiphase bus vehicles. In view of the conflict of multiphase bus priority requests at intersections, the priority vehicle traffic sequence is determined, which is the focus of this study. In this paper, a connected vehicle-enabled transit signal priority system (CV-TSPS) has been proposed, which uses vehicle-infrastructure communication function (V2I) technology to obtain real-time vehicle movement, road traffic states, and traffic signal light phase information. By developing a deep Q-learning neural network (DQNN), especially for optimizing traffic signal control strategy, the public transit vehicles will be prioritized to improve their travel efficiency, while the overall delay of road traffic flow will be balanced to ensure the safe and orderly passage of intersections. In order to verify the validity of the model, the SUMO traffic analysis software has been applied to simulate real-time traffic control, and the experimental results show that compared with the traditional timing signal control, the loss time of vehicles is reduced by nearly 40%, and the cumulative loss time per capita is reduced by nearly 43.5%, and a good control effect is achieved. In the case of medium and low densities, it is better than the solid scheduled traffic control scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many free-floating bicycle-sharing (FFBS) operators in cold region cities will put bicycles in warehouses and suspend services in winter due to factors such as safety and maintenance costs, resulting in the corresponding travel demand no longer be met. Considering the short-distance and green travel characteristics of FFBS, the flexible bus, as a sustainable demand-responsive transit service, is a suitable alternative transportation mode. To operate such a flexible bus system, service area and operation time planning is a key stage, however, the planning methods in relevant studies are not suitable for this research scenario. In view of the above, this paper proposed a data-driven method to determine the service area and operation time of flexible buses based on FFBS data. Firstly, an FFBS trip path reconstruction algorithm consists of fine-grained road network modelling and trajectory matching is proposed. Then, in the defined time slice, incorporating the idea of ride-sharing routes generation, according to the density-based clustering principle and considering topology between trajectories, a path clustering algorithm PATHSCAN is developed to generate the one-day path clusters. After that, a frequent pattern mining algorithm is applied to the multiday path clusters, and frequent pattern results with spatio-temporal correlation will be merged into the final service area. The generated planning results will cover ride-matching trips and high-frequency riding paths. Detailed application analysis and verification are carried out by using the real data from Tianjin, China. Through the evaluation and verification under the relatively limited experimental data set, the proposed data-driven method shows ideal planning results. Flexible bus service can supplement the green short-distance travel mode after the suspension of FFBS and can avoid FFBS travel demands switched to unsustainable transportation modes to a large extent. This study will contribute to urban sustainable transportation development and improving greenness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural tourism bus routes are an essential component of rural public transport systems, intending to serve tourist trips with passengers moving between critical regional transport nodes and tourist attractions. This paper presents a methodology for the optimal design of rural tourism bus routes by minimizing total travel costs for tourists and maximizing the total quality of tourism bus services. Road scenery, road design attributes, and route popularity elements are integrated into the evaluation of tourism bus service quality. The constraints for the bus route planning and tourism demand are taken into account to guarantee the rational design of rural tourism bus routes. A solution approach is put forward based on the initial solution set generation procedure and strengthens the elitist genetic algorithm. Finally, the bus network in a rural tourism destination of Nanjing is taken as the case study to validate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiaccess edge computing (MEC) and connected vehicle (CV) technologies have shown great potential and strength for traffic perception and real-time computing, which can be applied to enhance the efficiency of connected transit bus operations under their lower penetration conditions. Moreover, for the transit signal priority system, how to establish a model to measure traffic demand for conflicting priority request resolution and improve system response time has been widely researched for the last few decades. This paper proposes a dynamic priority weight (DPW) model for connected transit buses and a traffic signal control approach to coordinate multidirectional conflicting priority requests at a signalized intersection. The proposed model takes advantage of vehicle location, speed, and signal timing data to build time to change (TTOC) correlation functions to measure priority weights of both single-vehicle and directionality accumulation with consideration of vehicles arriving during the current green phase and conflict phase conditions; then, the aggregated priority weight value of each movement can be calculated in real-time. Once the maximum aggregated priority weight value among all movements is determined, the corresponding phase switch strategy is presented for the conflicting request resolution control problem. Homologous algorithm software for distributed deployment can be subsequently used for swift response. Simulation results show that the proposed DPW model-based traffic signal control method shows significant performance advancement, where the queueing vehicle number decrease exceeds 1 pcu/s and the throughput rate of major movements increases by approximately 2% without sacrificing the performance of minor movements in a large amount. What is more, it shows better delay optimization for social vehicles than the algorithm with delay as the objective while declining bus delay appreciable quantity with 43.4 s in average. Field test results also show that this method has excellent abilities to improve intersectional traffic capacity, for which queueing vehicle number and throughput rate indicators of all phases dramatically improved with 1.92 pcu/s and 6.68% on average, except for a slight degradation of individual minor traffic movements with 0.99 pcu/s and 0.11%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operational efficiency and stability are two critical aspects to measure bus systems. Influenced by many stochastic factors, buses always suffer from delay and bunching. Traditional studies focus on a single route and lack research on the systematic evaluation of bus network. In this paper, we propose a data-driven framework to analyze the efficiency and stability based on small granularity GPS trajectory data from the perspective of entire bus network. The IC card data and route data are used to extract the boarding passenger number and topological structure, respectively. The results show that the average headway of stations follows a lognormal distribution. Moreover, the distribution of arrival efficiency of stations is inhomogeneous and a small number of stations have large values. In addition, the relationships among average headway of stations, boarding passenger number, bus number, and complex network indicators are revealed. It is found that the average headway of station is negatively correlated with other indicators, which implies that complex network connections and more passenger flows could weaken the efficiency of bus operations. This paper provides a way to evaluate the operational performance of bus networks and could give help for monitoring and optimizing the daily operation of bus systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the travel analysis of students in the Jiulonghu campus, this paper constructs a small-scale shared bus in the campus, explores the impact of shared traffic on campus travel, promotes the optimization design of campus space environment, and creates a more comfortable and convenient travel space. In order to overcome the shortcomings of the traditional trip-based research, this paper analyzes travel behavior from the perspective of activity-based travel concept framework, considering more activities and travel information. At the same time, in order to improve the richness of information, the explicit preference survey (RP) and the declarative preference survey (SP), which are added to the bus sharing customized travel platform, are used to collect data of personal attributes and travel diary. Firstly, based on the ArcGIS platform, this paper constructs the activity travel path generation tool, dynamic activity density distribution tool, and spatiotemporal path clustering tool and comprehensively analyzes the activity travel mode from the aspects of time distribution, spatial distribution, and category characteristics. Secondly, based on the travel activities, the location selection model (S-MNL) considering the heterogeneity of SP and RP data sources and the activity duration planning model (Cox regression), considering the nonnormal distribution of activity duration are established to analyze the impact of shared bus on students' travel distance, travel time, and travel frequency. Finally, according to the analysis of modeling results, the impact of shared traffic on campus travel is analyzed, and the optimal design scheme of campus space is given. This paper uses the survey method based on declarative preference SP and the survey method based on explicit preference (RP) to get the actual and hypothetical travel response of travelers, which improves the data richness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human-computer interaction has become inevitable in digital world. HCI helps humans to incorporate technology to resolve even their day-to-day problems. The main objective of the paper is to utilize HCI in Intelligent Transportation Systems. In India, the most common and convenient mode of transportation is the buses. Every state government provides the bus transportation facility to all routes at an affordable cost. The main difficulty faced by the passengers (humans) is lack of information about bus numbers available for the particular route and Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) of the buses. There may be different reasons for the bus delay. These include heavy traffic, breakdowns, and bad weather conditions. The passengers waiting in the bus stops are neither aware of the delay nor the bus arrival time. These issues can be resolved by providing an HCI-based web/mobile application for the passengers to track their bus locations in real time. They can also check the Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) of a particular bus, calculated using machine learning techniques by considering the impacts of environmental dynamics, and other factors like traffic density and weather conditions and track their bus locations in real time. This can be achieved by developing a real-time bus management system for the benefit of passengers, bus drivers, and bus managers. This system can effectively address the problems related to bus timing transparency and arrival time forecasting. The buses are equipped with real-time vehicle tracking module containing Raspberry Pi, GPS, and GSM. The traffic density in the current location of the bus and weather data are some of the factors used for the ETA prediction using the Support Vector Regression algorithm. The model showed RMSE of 27 seconds when tested. The model is performing well when compared with other models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid urbanization and growth of population in megacities generate severe pressures on urban rail transit (URT) system. The quantity and frequency of disruptive events have increased significantly, which might have obvious adverse impacts. A large number of passengers are stranded at disrupted URT station when a disruptive event occurs. One essential solution for passenger evacuation is the bus bridging service. This paper is aimed at addressing the passenger evacuation problem caused by a disruptive event in the URT network, by proposing a bus bridging service model considering the passengers' space-time requirements. The model is proposed to minimize the waiting time of passengers and considers factors including bus service capacity limitations, bus stop parking capacity, and the maximum bridging time limit of a single bus. Buses are assumed to provide bridging service on either the local bus route or the direct bus route. The optimal routes and scheduling plans of bridging bus are designed. The model is applied to an example of a disruptive event in Shanghai URT line 9. The results of this example show that the proposed model is capable of reducing the waiting time of passengers and the number of buses used by 3.2% and 24.7%, compared with the traditional bus bridging service. Further analysis of the example shows that it is not a cost-effective solution to reserve a large number of buses for URT disruption. Decision-makers should comprehensively trade off between passengers' space-time demands and monetary costs of bus bridging service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to build a hybrid personalized multicriteria model in the Indian transportation industry to identify the most feasible transport mode suitable for commuters' customized preferences. A hybrid multicriterion model, i.e., Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), was used to compute the criteria weights, which were subsequently analyzed by three approaches, namely, Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), Fuzzy TOPSIS, Evaluation Based on Distance from Average Solution (EDA), and Interpretive Ranking Process (IRP). The case of an Indian metropolitan city, Hyderabad, is taken to illustrate the proposed approach. The paper highlights the following transport modes: metropolitan train (unconventional mode) and conventional modes such as the car, public bus transport, and bikes for Hyderabad. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis is performed to identify the consistency in ranking with variation in weights, and the Ensemble Ranking and transportation experts validate the rankings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to build a hybrid personalized multicriteria model in the Indian transportation industry to identify the most feasible transport mode suitable for commuters' customized preferences. A hybrid multicriterion model, i.e., Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), was used to compute the criteria weights, which were subsequently analyzed by three approaches, namely, Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), Fuzzy TOPSIS, Evaluation Based on Distance from Average Solution (EDA), and Interpretive Ranking Process (IRP). The case of an Indian metropolitan city, Hyderabad, is taken to illustrate the proposed approach. The paper highlights the following transport modes: metropolitan train (unconventional mode) and conventional modes such as the car, public bus transport, and bikes for Hyderabad. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis is performed to identify the consistency in ranking with variation in weights, and the Ensemble Ranking and transportation experts validate the rankings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bus lanes with intermittent priority (BLIPs) are lanes where general traffic is required to give way to approaching buses. BLIPs can improve the reliability of bus services and help maximize the use of road resources. It can be seen as an innovative sharing mobility, such as carsharing, carpooling, and lane sharing. However, implementation of BLIPs has never been feasible until vehicle communications could accommodate the idea. Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications have broad application prospects in the deployment of BLIPs. This paper develops a two-lane cellular automaton (CA) model to simulate BLIPs and assesses the benefits of connected vehicles for bus operation. In the model, lane-changings are asymmetric with an improved mandatory BLIP lane-changing rule underlying. The effects of BLIPs are explored through numerical simulations, including BLIPs' impacts on neighboring lanes, travel time saving, fuel consumption, and the punctuality rate of buses. Analysis of traffic flow characteristics of corridors using BLIPs reveals that there is a strong connection among the bus departure interval, clear distance, and road capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parallel restoration following blackouts can reduce economic and social losses. This paper aims to develop a parallel restoration method coordinating the partitioning scheme of the blackout system and restoration strategies of subsystems. The susceptible-infected-recovered model, i.e., a virus propagation model of complex networks, is used to decide the parallel restoration strategies online. Firstly, various types of viruses are used to represent different subsystems. The probability vector of virus infection is obtained according to the importance level of each bus. Secondly, an immunization strategy is developed based on the faulted buses in the blackout situation. According to the infection rate and the immunization strategy, the virus propagation direction will be changed based on real-time system conditions. The startup characteristics of units and the charging reactive power of restoration paths are considered as constraints to embed in the virus propagation process. Finally, the partitioning scheme and the restorative actions for subsystems are determined based on the infected results of viruses. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by case studies on the IEEE 39-bus and the IEEE 118-bus test systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linking AC and DC microgrids via a bidirectional AC-DC interfacing converter has emerged the hybrid AC-DC microgrid. The DC bus is connected to the grid by a series converter to mitigate the grid voltage's power quality problems. To enhance the reliability and to increase transferring active and nonactive powers between DC and AC main buses, the AC-DC bidirectional interfacing converters are connected in parallel. In this paper, the optimal number (n) of parallel-connected bidirectional interfacing converters is obtained to minimize the annual cost of investment and the reliability cost. A two-step deciding algorithm is proposed to find n. First, active and nonactive powers between DC and AC buses are obtained with power quality and power flow considerations. Based on two types of powers, two reliability indices are calculated, including the expected energy shortage (EES) based on active power and the expected Volt-Amps shortage (EVAS) based on nonactive power. The sum of two reliability index costs is considered as the reliability cost. Next, a decision-making strategy is executed to determine the optimal n by making a trade-off between minimization of two objectives: the annual cost of investment and the reliability cost. The simulations of a grid-tied hybrid AC-DC microgrid are done with the experimental measurement data of DC and AC loads and distributed generations. Simulation results verify the performance of the represented approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The NVH characteristics of light buses are a very important performance for market competitiveness. To solve the serious floor vibration of a light bus at speed of 60 km/h and 90 km/h, we first derive the matrix inversion TPA (MITPA) method, and then transfer path contribution is analyzed by applying matrix inversion TPA with TPA model establishment, operational vibration test, and FRF measurement. Next, the energy decoupling rate of the powertrain mount system (PMS) is optimized by rubber stiffness optimization based on the path contribution analysis taking both amplitude and phase into consideration. The optimized natural frequencies and energy decoupling rate indicate that energy decoupling rate (EDR) of each DoF of the powertrain mount system is improved. Finally, to verify the optimization effect, this paper implements an operational vibration test with optimized mount installed. The results indicate that floor vibration of postoptimization is improved significantly compared with that of preoptimization. This paper offers a method for engineers to improve vibration problem of vehicle by combining experimental TPA for identification of dominant paths with optimization procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a mode of green transport that can effectively alleviate urban traffic congestion and improve air quality, bus transport is highly subsidized by governments at all levels in China. Thus, measuring efficiency in the bus transport sector is particularly important. However, few reports in the literature have taken exogenous environmental factors into consideration to evaluate public transport operation efficiency. This may lead to inaccurate evaluation results. This study employs the three-stage DEA model, which can eliminate the impacts of exogenous environmental factors on public bus transport operation to gain real efficiency results. Meanwhile, to further explore how exogenous environmental factors affect bus transport operations, a tobit model is used to analyse the results. The main results of this paper reveal the following: first, exogenous environmental factors have a significant impact on the operational efficiency of bus transport. It is reasonable and necessary to select the three-stage method to eliminate environmental factors for real bus operation efficiency. Second, the fluctuations of the bus transport efficiency of 30 cities decreased during 2010–2016. The western region has the highest operation efficiency, followed by the eastern and the middle regions. Third, the economic, taxi transport, and urban rail transport have a marked impact on the operational efficiency of bus transport. This paper confirms the important influence of exogenous environmental factors on the efficiency of public transport operations. In addition, this article could help improve the efficiency of urban public transport operations and promote the attractiveness of urban public transport and the amount of green travel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to tackle the congestion and environmental issues, customized bus services are proposed and deployed in metropolitan areas. As emerging public transportation services, customized bus services bring passengers more convenience and accessibility. Besides, conventional customized bus services generally organize homogeneous fleet and single location selection to passengers. In this paper, to enhance the mobility and flexibility of customized buses and increase companies' profit, we propose a new form of customized bus service with heterogeneous fleets and multiple candidate locations. First, a mixed-integer programming model (MIP) is developed to describe the customized bus problem. Compared with the conventional model, the proposed MIP is involved in the case of one passenger with multiple candidate pickup or delivery locations and can be solved by GUROBI on small scale, quickly and efficiently. Second, an improved adaptive large neighborhood search algorithm ( ALNS i p ) is utilized to address the large-scale problem more efficiently. Time slack calculation method is then designed to optimize vehicle timetables, which provides stable and excellent performance for searching feasible solutions. In addition, we propose two inserting operators to deal with the problem with multiple candidate locations and analyse its influence on the results. Finally, we test the performance of the proposed model and algorithm on the numerical experiments. And they are verified the effectiveness and implication in a small-scale case on a simplified Sioux waterfall network and a large-scale problem in Beijing, China. The result shows that ALNS i p outperforms other algorithms in searching for more satisfying solutions with higher efficiency. However, the GUROBI solver can obtain the solution to small-scale problems within a shorter time than ALNS i p . Furthermore, it can be suggested that the heterogeneous fleets service with multiple candidate locations is helpful to facilitate collaboration among vehicles and optimize pickup and delivery routes in consequence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the condition of dynamically collecting vehicle operation information, bus dynamic dispatching is an effective means to stabilize the vehicle operation according to the traffic plan and improve the stability of the system by giving real-time response and continuous dynamic control to the vehicle running state. Speed control does not increase the extra parking time at the station, does not waste parking resources, does not significantly prolong the waiting time of passengers at the station, and is more easily accepted by passengers. In this paper, by using the speed control method, the problem of how to realize the coordinated control between the short-turning bus and the full-length bus is studied in order to stabilize that the headway between the full-length buses is equal to the departure interval, and the headway between the short-turning bus and the full-length bus is equal to the expected headway. The problem of ensuring the coordinated and stable operation of the short-turning bus and the full-length bus is studied. The result of an example shows that the coordinated control strategy can make the whole system run more stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Distributed slack bus (DSB) models for the resolution of power flow problems are a more realistic approach than the classical single slack bus concept. DSB models have been widely implemented in iterative approaches such as in Newton‐Raphson power flow methods. However, iterative algorithms may lead to incorrect solutions or may fail to reach convergence under inappropriate initial estimations. The holomorphic embedding load‐flow method (HELM) deals with the solution of the nonlinear power flow equations by means of complex analysis techniques, resulting in a deterministic and noniterative method, which is independent of initial estimations. As such, this paper proposes, from two different methodologies, a novel formulation and implementation of the DSB model for the HELM, which overcomes in that way the disadvantages of iterative methods and also incorporates the inherent advantages of DSB models. Moreover, this paper performs convergence and speed capability tests of the two proposed methodologies using two real‐size benchmark systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the transportation industry, crew management is typically decomposed into two phases: crew scheduling and crew rostering. Due to the complexity of scheduling and rostering, bus transportation is not an exception and many relevant studies do not consider both procedures simultaneously. However, such a decomposition can yield inferior schedules/rosters. To address this issue, this paper proposes an integrated scheduling and rostering model for bus drivers and devises a branch-and-price-and-cut (BPC) algorithm to solve the complex problem. The proposed solution framework is empirically applied to real-world instances with various problem sizes whose data is collected from H Bus Company located in southern Taiwan. To validate the effectiveness and evaluate the efficiency of the proposed solution framework, this paper compares the solution obtained from the BPC algorithm with that of a benchmark optimization package. The results show that the proposed BPC algorithm can solve problems with large real-world instances within a reasonable computational time. Moreover, in the numerical experiments, this paper finds that the scheduling and rostering results of the bus drivers are more sensitive to the rostering constraints. Also, the proposed integrated framework can yield a better solution than the solution from a conventional two-phase approach, which demonstrates the advantage of the integration in this paper. The proposed method provided can be employed to deal with the challenges in driver planning for bus companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers an urban transit network design problem (UTNDP) that deals with construction of an efficient set of transit routes and associated service frequencies on an existing road network. The UTNDP is an NP-hard problem, characterized by a huge search space, multiobjective nature, and multiple constraints in which the evaluation of candidate route sets can be both time consuming and challenging. This paper proposes a hybrid differential evolution with particle swarm optimization (DE-PSO) algorithm to solve the UTNDP, aiming to simultaneously optimize route configuration and service frequency with specific objectives in minimizing both the passengers' and operators' costs. Computational experiments are conducted based on the well-known benchmark data of Mandl's Swiss network and a large dataset of the public transport system of Rivera City, Northern Uruguay. The computational results of the proposed hybrid algorithm improve over the benchmark obtained in most of the previous studies. From the perspective of multiobjective optimization, the proposed hybrid algorithm is able to produce a diverse set of nondominated solutions, given the passengers' and operators' costs are conflicting objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public transports like the bus and subway inherently experience noise, vibration, and temperature variations that are different from building environment. Each of them can influence passengers' comfort, but little is known about their combined effects, especially how they affect thermal comfort. This paper presents experimental results from a series of human subject tests under different noises, vibrations, and temperatures. 32 subjects' subjective perception and physiological response were collected under three temperatures (22.5, 25.5, 28.5℃), five noise levels (55, 60, 65, 70, 75 dB(A)), and five vibrating accelerations (0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 m/s2). We also varied the noise and vibration spectrums to simulate the bus and subway environments. In total, 48 195‐min and 192 115‐min laboratory tests were conducted. By using significance tests (paired t tests and two‐way ANOVA tests) and sensitivity analysis (Treed Gaussian Process), the results show that temperature, noise, and vibration exposures can significantly affect subjects' overall satisfaction. More interestingly, high noise and vibration levels can cause warmer thermal sensations. A change in the noise of 20 dB(A) or vibration of 0.6 m/s2 is equivalent to an ambient temperature change of 0.6 °C. We also observed higher heart rates and metabolic heat production at higher levels of noise and vibrating accelerators. Based on the test results, regression models were developed to describe the combined effects of temperature, noise, and vibration on subjects' overall comfort perception and thermal neutral temperature. They can serve as references for the design and operation of public transport environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing adoption of electric buses (e-buses), e-bus scheduling problem has become an essential part of transit operation planning. As e-buses have a limited battery capacity, e-bus scheduling problem aims to assign vehicles to timetabled service trips on the bus routes considering their charging demand. Affected by the dynamic operation environment, the travel time and energy consumption of the e-buses often display considerable randomness, resulting in unexpected trip start delays and battery energy shortages. In this paper, we addressed the e-bus scheduling problem under travel time uncertainty by robust optimization approaches. We consider the cardinality constrained uncertainty set to formulate a robust multidepot EVSP model considering trip time uncertainty and partial recharging. The model is developed based on the dynamic programming equations that we formulated for trip chain robustness checking. A branch-and-price (BP) algorithm is devised to generate provably high-quality solutions for large-scale instances. In the BP algorithm, an efficient label setting algorithm is developed to solve the robust resource-constrained shortest path subproblem. Comprehensive numerical experiments are conducted based on the bus routes in Shenzhen to demonstrate the effectiveness of the suggested methodology. The robustness of the schedules was evaluated through Monte Carlo simulation. The results show that the trip start delay and battery energy shortage caused by the travel time uncertainty can be effectively reduced at the expense of an increase in the operational cost. A trade-off should be made between the reduction in infeasibility rate and increase in operational cost to choose a proper uncertainty budget. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Fault diagnosis is vital for detecting the type of fault and rapid restoration of the electric power supply. The existing machine learning‐based classification method for detecting fault shows better performance. But these methods require manual pre‐processing steps and feature engineering, which makes them unreliable and time‐consuming for the complex and multi‐bus system. In this paper, a fully automated approach based on a deep learning framework has been proposed for the multi‐classification of faults in a grid network. The deep learning framework provides a better incentive to predict the type of fault directly using raw data as input. For this intended task of fault diagnosis, a fully convolutional network is designed and implemented to provide better performance with less trainable parameters. The proposed scheme is tested on the large number of simulated data generated from an IEEE 30 bus system. The performance for fault classification is validated through 10‐fold cross‐validation and numerous performance metrics like accuracy, recall, precision, specificity, and F1 score are evaluated. The performance of the different models with parameter variation is compared to obtain better performance with optimal trainable parameters. It has also been compared with some existing methods and shows promising result for fault classification in the large or multi‐bus system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: In recent years, the penetration rate of distributed generation (DG) in the distribution network is increasing, which significantly adds the uncertainty for state estimation. To tackle this problem, in this paper, a state estimation method based on DG output mode discrimination is proposed. The historical output data of DG are analyzed offline by the k‐means clustering algorithm, and the output modes are identified by the pre‐state estimation results before the measurements are updated. The obtained pseudo measurements are used to perform the secondary state estimation based on the model information and the measurements. The proposed method can effectively improve the state estimation of distributed generation buses, which is verified by MATLAB simulations in the PE&G‐69 bus system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bus passenger transport is very important for sustainable urban mobility, and due to the characteristics of the street network, it is usually realized in the conditions of mixed traffic flow. Disturbances and sudden changes of traffic flow parameters occurring in the street network in a mixed traffic flow affect the disruptions in schedule and travel time of all vehicles in the traffic flow, including public transport (PT) vehicles. In order to keep to the planned schedule in the peak hours of PT lines carried out in the conditions of mixed traffic flow, the operators introduce new vehicles or reduce the vehicles' dwell time at terminuses, which is often impossible to do. The use of a larger number of public transport vehicles increases the fuel consumption, pollutants' emission, and the operating costs. In this paper, a network optimization model was developed for defining the influence of the change of traffic flow parameters in a mixed traffic flow on travel time of PT vehicles. The model takes into consideration uncertain time unevenness of the change of traffic flow parameters, which enables determining the optimization of travel time and defining the necessary number of public transport vehicles for the purpose of keeping to the planned schedule. In order to develop the transport model, counting and analysis of the characteristics of traffic flow at 61 intersections on the city territory were carried out. The model was tested on bus line number 4 of PT in Novi Sad. The model showed that it is possible to achieve certain savings regarding the number of vehicles with the unchanged headway, that is, the unchanged level of service which is offered to the users. With the application of the model in real traffic conditions, significant savings, as well as operating and external costs' reduction, can be achieved, which contributes to the sustainability of public bus transport in urban environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The abnormal driving behavior of buses brings about greater security threat. How to effectively identify the abnormal driving behavior of buses has become one of the problems of cracking public transportation safety. This paper constructs an abnormal behavior recognition model of buses based on improved support vector machine. Through the verification, the model has a high recognition rate, which provides an important means for further improving the safety of public transportation operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the optimization of bus signal priority with the consideration of the stochastic traffic demand. Based on a situation of the variability of traffic composition, the phase clearance reliability (PCR) value of each phase and traffic composition ratio is introduced to reflect the traffic condition at intersection. Then, a bus signal priority optimization model is proposed with the purpose of the maximum of the total vehicular departure as the optimization goal. In order to obtain the optimal solution, an improved algorithm is designed by introducing the PCR value search strategy. Finally, two cases' study is exhibited to demonstrate the reasonability of the model, theory, and algorithm. The result shows that the model can not only clear the queue under the condition of continuous dynamic traffic flow but also reduce the vehicle queuing and passenger delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the consideration of the uneven traffic volume distribution at intersections on urban arterials, this paper aims to minimize the overall passenger delay (buses and private vehicles) at intersections and identify the applicable conditions of the proposed method with field data. The overlapping phase-based signal control logic and the bus priority control algorithm under two-way signal coordination on arterial roads are proposed. The vehicular capacities and occupancies for buses and passenger cars are considered in the evaluation of the method performance. A field test was carried out at two major intersections on an arterial road in Hefei, China. With the test data, the proposed method is examined and the possible influencing factors are analyzed for identifying the corresponding applicable conditions. The analysis result shows that the application of the overlapping phase helps to provide a relatively flexible signal control for the varying traffic demands at intersections. Compared to the conventional phase, it isof more practical significance to consider overlapping phase and apply bussignal priority control under two-way signal coordination according to the condition of uneven traffic volumedistribution at intersections on urban arterials. The proposed method can effectively decrease the total passenger delay at the intersections on urban arterials under certain applicable conditions. The possible factors influencing the method applicability are identified as well. It is verified that bus signal priority control under the two-way signal coordination, based on overlapping phases, is more conducive to improving traffic efficiency on urban arterials. Regarding the influencing factors and the applicability of the proposed method, the results show that not all situations are conducive to decreasing passenger delay at intersections. The proposed method should be applied under certain applicable conditions and principles in order to efficiently and effectively improve the traffic efficiency on arterial roads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The uneven distribution of travel demand is incredibly commonplace in cities, but insufficient attention has been paid to this problem. In this paper, we explore the impact of the uneven distribution of travel demand on an accessible network. A model with a sparse and dense mixed grid transit network based on an uneven distribution of travel demand is proposed to provide a high-performance bus service. The transit network was composed of two parts: a dense grid network in the downtown area and a sparse grid network in the periphery. The objective function of the model included agency cost and passenger cost, where the decision variables were the downtown-to-city ratio, the downtown headway, stop spacing (line spacing), and ratio of the periphery headway to the downtown headway. This study validated the proposed model using the demands of San Francisco. The concentrated spatial demand resulted in a lower total cost, whereas the varying travel demand must be controlled within an appropriate range to maintain the bus performance. The stable bus lines and stops with a variable timetable of the proposed model are profitable for fast-growing cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electric buses (EBs) have been implemented worldwide and exhibited great potential for air pollution reduction and traffic noise control. In regular charging scenarios, the deployment of charging facilities and the operational scheduling of the transit system is crucial to bus transit system management. In this paper, we proposed a joint optimization model of regular charging electric bus transit network schedule and stationary charger deployment considering partial charging policy and time-of-use electricity prices. The objective of the model is to minimize the total investment cost of the transit system including the capital and maintenance cost of EBs and chargers, the power consumption cost, and time-related in-service cost. A solving procedure based on the improved adaptive genetic algorithm (AGA) is further designed and a transit network at inner Anting Town, Shanghai, with 8 individual bus routes and 867 daily service trips is adopted for the model validation. The validation results illustrated that the methodology considering the partial charging policy can arrange the charging schedule adaptive to the time-of-use electricity prices. Compared with the benchmark of single line separate scheduling, the proposed model can yield 3 million RMB investment saving by highly utilizing EBs and battery chargers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To prevent and control public transport safety accidents in advance and guide the safety management and decision-making optimization of public transport vehicles, based on the forewarning and other multisource data of public transport vehicles in Zhenjiang, holographic portraits of public transport safety operation characteristics are constructed from the perspectives of time, space, and driver factors, and a prediction model of fatigue driving and driving risk of bus drivers based on BP neural network is constructed. Finally, model checking and virtual simulation experiments are carried out. The result of the research shows that the driver's fatigue risk during the period of 7 : 00-8 : 00 am is much higher than other periods. When the bus speed is about 30 km/h, the driver fatigue forewarning events occur the most. Drivers aged 30–34 years have the largest proportion of vehicle abnormal forewarning, drivers aged 40–44 years have the largest proportion of fatigue forewarning events, and drivers with a driving experience of 15–19 years have the largest overall proportion of various forewarning events. When the vehicle speed range is (18, 20) km/h and (42, 45) km/h, the probability of fatigue driving risk and driving risk forewarning increases sharply; and when the vehicle speed is lower than 17 km/h or 41 km/h, the probability of fatigue driving risk and driving risk forewarning, respectively, is almost zero. The probability of fatigue forewarning during low peak hours on rainy days is about 30% lower than that during peak hours. The probability of driving forewarning during flat peak hours is 15% higher than that during low peak hours and about 10% lower than that during peak hours. This paper realized for the first time the use of real forewarning data of buses in the full time, the whole region, and full cycle to carry out research. Related results have important theoretical value and practical significance for scientifically guiding the safety operation and emergency management strategies of buses, improving the service level of bus passenger transportation capacity and safety operation, and promoting the safety, health, and sustainable development of the public transportation industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The feeder bus, as an important component of urban public transportation systems, is capable of filling the existing service gap left by urban rail transit to satisfy feeder demand. Two challenges to taking advantage of the feeder bus are identified. The first challenge is to identify the service gap, and the second one is to strengthen the coordination of multilevel urban traffic modes. Given these two challenges, this paper established a route design model that introduced a feeder bus demand coefficient to quantify feeder demand for each bus stop. To assist the design of feeder bus routes, an optimization approach based on the tabu search algorithm was proposed. Considering the sizeable combinational optimization problem, the algorithm decomposed this problem into three phases: feeder area partition, candidate stop selection, and route design problem. In the first phase, the entire area was partitioned into several subareas and the specific boundary nodes were moved into an adjacent subarea. Then, the stops with the minimum overall travel cost from every subarea were chosen as candidate ones under the limit of operating costs. The last step was to find the shortest circular route to visit each candidate stop and determine the operating direction. The proposed optimization had been implemented in a downtown area of Suzhou, China, in order to verify its effectiveness through the performance in terms of the quality of optimal solutions and computing efficiency. In addition, a possibility of simplifying a multiple circular route design problem to a single route design problem utilizing spatial clustering is provided to enhance the computing efficiency in a large-scale network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bus dwelling time at stops is affected by the number of boarding and alighting passengers. Due to the uncertainty of traffic state, dwelling time will become unstable, resulting in unreliable bus operations. A short-turn strategy shares passenger demand in certain segments of the full-length vehicles; therefore, this strategy can reduce the dwell time of the full-length vehicles and have potential to improve reliability of bus operations. Firstly, this paper builds a bus operation state model considering short-turn vehicles. Secondly, the process of bus operation is analyzed to investigate the impact of passenger demand on reliability. Then, we propose a short-turn dispatching strategy, which can accurately determine the operation area and departure time. Finally, a numerical simulation is used to evaluate different strategies. As the result, the analysis reveals the following: (1) the bus operational reliability of full-length vehicles under high passenger demand could be improved by a well-designed short-turn strategy; (2) it is beneficial to improve the reliability of bus operation when short-turn vehicles departure at the change point; and (3) an undesigned short-turn dispatching strategy has a negative effect on full-length vehicles operational reliability. This study can help design a short-turn strategy and make valuable contributions to the bus management system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bus dwelling time at stops is affected by the number of boarding and alighting passengers. Due to the uncertainty of traffic state, dwelling time will become unstable, resulting in unreliable bus operations. A short-turn strategy shares passenger demand in certain segments of the full-length vehicles; therefore, this strategy can reduce the dwell time of the full-length vehicles and have potential to improve reliability of bus operations. Firstly, this paper builds a bus operation state model considering short-turn vehicles. Secondly, the process of bus operation is analyzed to investigate the impact of passenger demand on reliability. Then, we propose a short-turn dispatching strategy, which can accurately determine the operation area and departure time. Finally, a numerical simulation is used to evaluate different strategies. As the result, the analysis reveals the following: (1) the bus operational reliability of full-length vehicles under high passenger demand could be improved by a well-designed short-turn strategy; (2) it is beneficial to improve the reliability of bus operation when short-turn vehicles departure at the change point; and (3) an undesigned short-turn dispatching strategy has a negative effect on full-length vehicles operational reliability. This study can help design a short-turn strategy and make valuable contributions to the bus management system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The feeder bus, as an important component of urban public transportation systems, is capable of filling the existing service gap left by urban rail transit to satisfy feeder demand. Two challenges to taking advantage of the feeder bus are identified. The first challenge is to identify the service gap, and the second one is to strengthen the coordination of multilevel urban traffic modes. Given these two challenges, this paper established a route design model that introduced a feeder bus demand coefficient to quantify feeder demand for each bus stop. To assist the design of feeder bus routes, an optimization approach based on the tabu search algorithm was proposed. Considering the sizeable combinational optimization problem, the algorithm decomposed this problem into three phases: feeder area partition, candidate stop selection, and route design problem. In the first phase, the entire area was partitioned into several subareas and the specific boundary nodes were moved into an adjacent subarea. Then, the stops with the minimum overall travel cost from every subarea were chosen as candidate ones under the limit of operating costs. The last step was to find the shortest circular route to visit each candidate stop and determine the operating direction. The proposed optimization had been implemented in a downtown area of Suzhou, China, in order to verify its effectiveness through the performance in terms of the quality of optimal solutions and computing efficiency. In addition, a possibility of simplifying a multiple circular route design problem to a single route design problem utilizing spatial clustering is provided to enhance the computing efficiency in a large-scale network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bus transit is one of the main transfer modes at high-speed railway (HSR) stations. Performing a scientific and reasonable evaluation of the present bus traffic transfer service is highly significant for improving the efficiency of the HSR and increasing the use of the system. This paper focuses on the passengers’ transfer experience and proposes a methodology to evaluate current bus traffic transfer service. Factors that affect passenger satisfaction during the bus transfer process at HSR stations based on the passengers’ perceptions are analyzed by convenience, comfort, safety, service, and economy. A structural equation model (SEM) is developed as an evaluation approach to explore the correlations of bus transfer service, passenger perceived value, and passenger satisfaction. To calibrate the model, a questionnaire survey of passengers transferring to a bus was conducted at Xi’anbei Railway Station. This paper analyzes the relationships between observed variables and latent variables in the measured model, the influences of exogenous variables on endogenous variables in the structural model, and the impact of the passengers’ socioeconomic attributes on passenger satisfaction. Analysis results of the SEM show that economy and convenience are the critical influential indicators of passenger satisfaction, among which bus fare preferential policy and transfer distance are the most significant factors. The findings can provide helpful information for planners and managers to improve the services of existing HSR stations and to guide the planning of new ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses various aspects related to the design, development, and validation of a web-based information system that is intended to facilitate the management of a bus transportation service offered by a Jordanian university to its staff and students. Passengers can use this system to track bus trips to find out how far a desired bus is from a specific location. Also, they can know about arrivals and departures of buses managed using this system. Specifically, this work explores UI design, data structures, database design, system architecture, and development methods to realize the required features (e.g., user roles, bus setup, driver assignment, bus routes, bus schedules, and trip monitoring) in the proposed bus location tracking system. It also suggests using the free open-source API, rather than the proprietary Google Maps API, to develop the interactive maps. The system also records trip information and solicits passenger feedback to allow reviewing and analyzing that data to enhance the quality of service, reduce operation cost, and improve passenger satisfaction. The conducted comparative analysis results illustrate that the open-source API is accurate, fast, and responsive similar to the proprietary API. Furthermore, the user survey output confirms that the deployed system is easy to use, helpful, fast, responsive, and accurate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bus route planning is a challenging task due to multiple perspective interactions among passengers, service providers, and government agencies. This paper presents a multidimensional Stackelberg-game-based framework and mathematical model to best trade off the decisions of multiple stakeholders that previous literature rarely captures, i.e., governments, service providers, and passengers, in planning a new bus route or adjusting an existing one. The proposed model features a bilevel structure with the upper level reflecting the perspective of government agencies in subsidy allocation and the lower level representing the decisions of service providers in dispatching frequency and bus fleet size design. The bilevel model is framed as a Stackelberg game where government agencies take the role of "leader" and service providers take the role of "follower" with social costs and profits set as payoffs, respectively. This Stackelberg-game-based framework can reflect the decision sequence of both participants as well as their competition or collaboration relationship in planning a bus route. The impact of such decisions on the mode and route choices of passengers is captured by a Nested Logit model. A partition-based bisection algorithm is developed to solve the proposed model. Results from a case study in Shanghai validate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed model and algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the factors influencing passengers' satisfaction toward bus transit and develop the improvement strategy for the small-medium city. Data including individual attributes, travel activity attributes, and perceived service attributes were collected in the city of Weinan, China. The ordered logit (OL) model and ordered Probit (OP) model were employed to explore the significant factors associated with passengers' satisfaction toward bus transit. The odds ratio (OR) was applied to quantitatively measure the effects of the significant factors. Improving strategies of bus transit service were proposed based on the model results using the three-factor theory. Results show that the OL model outperforms the OP model. The age, daily average waiting time, perceived waiting time, transferring convenience, the attitude of the driver, intelligent travel information service, hygienic environment inside the bus, ticket price, bus route setting, and bus stop setting significantly affect the passengers' satisfaction. Among them, the ticket price, perceived waiting time, bus stop setting, intelligent travel information service, transferring convenience, and bus route setting were identified as exciting factors. It is recommended that optimization of bus route and bus stop setting, building bus dedicated lanes, optimizing dynamic charging system, and providing intelligent travel information service could be effective strategies to improve passengers' satisfaction toward bus transit in Chinese small-medium cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper envisions and assesses the performance of an autonomous bus-on-demand (ABoD) system. We take Fuyang, Zhejiang, China, as the study area to investigate the spatiotemporal distribution of bus travel demand during workdays, and we propose replacing inefficient bus routes with the ABoD system. Agent-based models with various bus dispatching and operation control strategies are constructed to evaluate the performance of the ABoD system. The behaviors and interactions of the agents, passengers, autonomous buses, and a control center are designed. After the verification of the simulated bus travel demand with real-world demand, a series of scenarios with various ABoD operation strategies are simulated. The simulation results show that, in comparison with both current fixed-schedule bus services and the optimized bus dispatching strategies, the ABoD system occupies fewer road resources and utilizes bus vehicles more efficiently. Besides, the system is adaptive to the sudden surge in bus travel demand and is economically sustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For resolving or alleviating the transportation problems, it is necessary to efficiently manage the public transportation and provide public transport services with high quality and advocate green travel, which rely on accurate traffic data. In order to obtain more accurate bus speed in the future, this paper proposed a novel dynamic hierarchical spatial-temporal network model based on Grey Relation Analysis (EGRA), the convolutional neural network (CNN), and the gated recurrent unit (GRU). The proposed model is named the DHSTN; it exploited EGRA to analyze and choose the suitable candidate line sections with high impacts on the target section and, then, construct a multilayer structure based on the CNN, GRU, and attention mechanism to analyze and capture the spatial and temporal dependency, and finally, the extreme learning machine (ELM) is exploited for the fusion of the long-term and short-term dependency to predict the bus speed variation in the next time interval. Comparative experiments indicate that the DHSTN has better performances, the mean absolute error is around 2.6, and it meets the real requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the real-time customized bus (CB) route optimization problem, which aims to maximize the service rate for clients and profits for operators. The on-road bus has a flexible route, which can be updated based on the real-time data and route optimization solutions. A two-phase framework is established. In phase 1, the vehicle-related data including existing route and schedule, client-related data involving pick-up/drop-off location, and time windows are collected once receiving a new CB request. The second phase optimizes the bus route by establishing three nonlinear programming models under the given data from phase 1. A concept of profit difference is introduced to decide the served demand. To improve computation efficiency, a real-time search algorithm is proposed that the neighboring buses are tested one by one. Finally, a numerical study based on Sioux Falls network reveals the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. The results indicate that the real-time route optimization can be achieved within the computation time of 0.17–0.38 seconds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The headway-based control method is usually used to regulate the bus headways and improve reliability of public transit. In general, the holding control strategy is applied at the control point, because enough space for dwell longer at the control point is required, while the stop-skipping control strategy can be used at any bus stop. However, in the headway-based control method, too much stop-skipping will bring longer waiting time and make the passengers impatient. The number and distribution of control points for stop-skipping are not considered in previous self-equalizing bus headway control works. Therefore, in this paper, the control points selection rules for stop-skipping involving their number and distribution on the bus route are discussed. A second by second discrete system is formulated to describe the bus operation. In the proposed control method, the threshold value for activating stop-skipping strategy is raised, avoiding provoking much additional waiting time because of boarding rejected. In the numerical analysis, a set of cases are conducted to evaluate the performance of control method under different number and distribution of control points for stop-skipping. The numerical results show that distribution of control points for stop-skipping has a greater influence on the public transit than the number. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]