Holding Times to Maintain Quasi-Regular Headways to Reduce Real-Time Bus Bunching

Abstract: Real-time control strategies palliate with the day's dynamics in bus rapid transit systems. In this work, we focus on a bus bunching problem that minimizes the number of buses of the same line cruising head-to-tail or arriving at a stop simultaneously by using bus holding times at the stops. For this, we propose a new mathematical model with quadratic constraints, whose objective function minimizes the penalties caused by buses that are bunching. Experimental results on a simulation of a bus rapid transit system in Monterrey, Mexico, show the efficiency of our approach. The results show a bus bunching reduction of 45\% compared to the case without optimization. Moreover, in some scenarios the passenger waiting times are reduced by 30%.