Evaluation of Impacts of Dispatch Headway Variability in Bus Transit Systems in a Simulated Route

Abstract

This paper presents reliability analysis of bus transit systems based on numerical simulation of the range of headway variations in a bus route consists of multiple stops. Variation of performance in bus operation due to the variation of departure headways is determined through number of simulations. Operational performance is measured by the average waiting time of passengers at stops. Simulation results show that average waiting time as well as spread of waiting time distribution increases when bus has limited carrying capacity compared with a system where the bus capacity is unlimited. Moreover, the distribution of passenger waiting times widens as the headway variation increases. Variations in headways at a stop adversely affect the scheduled bus operation which result variation in passenger loads for subsequent buses.