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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]

We develop a methodology to optimize the schedule coordination of a full-stop service pattern and a short-turning service pattern on a bus route. To capture the influence of bus crowding and seat availability on passengers' riding experience, we develop a Markov model to describe the seat-searching process of a passenger and an approach to estimate the transition probabilities of the Markov model. An optimization model that incorporates the Markov model is proposed to design the short-turning strategy. The proposed model minimizes the total cost, which includes operational cost, passengers' waiting time cost and passengers' in-vehicle travel time cost. Algorithm is developed to produce optimal values of the decision variables. The proposed methodology is evaluated in a case study. Compared with methodologies that ignore the effect of bus crowding, the proposed methodology could better balance bus load along the route and between two service patterns, provide passengers with better riding experience and reduce the total cost. In addition, it is shown that the optimal design of the short-turning strategy is sensitive to seat capacity. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]