The Across Latitudes and Cultures BRT Centre of Excellence is pleased to announce a monthly webinar series to share timely public transit research and encourage ongoing collaboration. The series is open to anyone and will address issues relevant to researchers and practitioners. Please share this announcement with your extended network.
The second webinar was:
Minimizing Bus Bunching: Results from a new strategy that cuts wait times, improve comfort and brings reliability to Bus services
Friday, December 14, 2012 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM Chilean Summer Time (11am EST)
Presented by Juan Carlos Munoz, Director of the Bus Rapid Transit Centre of Excellence
See summary and presentation below.
Please email Laurel at lpaget@uc.cl with any questions or future topic suggestions.
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Minimizing Bus Bunching: Results from a new strategy that cuts wait times, improve comfort and brings reliability to Bus services
Worldwide, medium and high frequency bus services face bus bunching problems damaging waiting times, comfort, reliability and cycle time variability.
In this talk we present a novel methodology to prevent bunching built on the well known bus holding control strategy. We report simulation-based savings of excess waiting time of over 60%. We will first discuss some real-world considerations that can hurt effectiveness of the strategy such as some drivers disobeying the instructions, very high speed variability or biased beliefs regarding passenger arrivals to each stop.
The results of its first implementation in a bus line in Santiago de Chile will also be presented showing very encouraging results.
Finally, we will discuss how the methodology can be extended to consider several bus lines operating in the same corridor.
