Feeder transit integration with high frequency trunk lines

Abstract

Public transportation systems are perceived as less competitive when compared to private vehicles because of their increased travel times due to the lack of overall door-to-door availability and poor inter-modal transfer synchronisation. To address this issue, our study develops an optimisation model for the coordination of trunk lines with last-mile feeder lines. The developed linear programming model re-adjusts the dispatching times of last-mile feeder bus lines according to the timetables of trunk lines operated by metro services. Stop-specific bus holding strategies are employed to reduce the risk of missed connections and minimise prolonged waiting times. Compared against state-of-the-art regularity-based approaches for bus services, the trade-off between optimising for transfers and service regularity is analysed. A reduction of 86% in transfer waiting times is determined when compared to the original schedule, and 82.4% compared to the results of regularity-based optimisation.