Can pre-planned stop skipping improve the operational efficiency in the presence of uncertainty?

What is it about?

Planning which public transit stops should be skipped can reduce the operational costs. Nevertheless -for having a positive effect in practice- the traffic conditions during the daily operations should not deviate significantly from those expected. This study develops a robust stop-skipping planning method that incorporates the uncertainty of trip travel times. The proposed approach is validated with the use of five months of data from a circular bus line in Singapore demonstrating an improved performance of more than 10% in worst-case scenarios which encourages further investigation.

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Why is it important?

Transit operators plan which trips will skip a number of transit stops in order to reduce the operating costs while meeting the passenger demand. However, the daily travel time fluctuations due to exogenous factors such as traffic, road works and overcrowding might result in negative effects (i.e., the devised stop-skipping plan might be counterproductive if the actual travel conditions differ significantly from the expected ones). This study finds that robust stop-skipping plans that consider worst-case scenarios of travel time fluctuations can improve significantly the actual performance of services. Good quality trials are needed to expand the findings.

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