Optimal design of a short-turning strategy considering seat availability.

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]