Design of flexible public bus services

Among major cities around the world, public transport tends to be slow, inefficient and inflexible. Even with the arise of “smart cities”, which rely on online communication technologies, bus drivers and even bus service operators have no knowledge of real time traffic conditions. This outdated scenario keeps bus systems losing space for flexible private transportation. In literature, alternatives for the classical bus services has been developed over the years. Most of them propose on “demand adaptive” services, with variations on route service or timetable. Another type of alternative service integrates ride sharing or interlining routes in order to enhance mobility of public transport. However, these solutions to the classical bus operation is set beforehand with previous collected information (off-line). In this project, we aim to include data gathered from “smart cities” in order to execute on-line changes in routes, stops and timetables. This data may include potential passengers communicating their destination or request for arrival time, updates about traffic conditions and bus operator information about the current system. Between a conventional system and a complete on-demand system, lies a whole range of demand-responsive options to improve real time bus operations. This project focuses on investigating the opportunities and practical applicability of merging lines or rescheduling timetables of two or more routes serving the same low-demand area. The main concept on flexibility of bus routes is to make trips efficiently and more frequent according to passengers request for travels, avoiding empty trips when the demand is low as well as unnecessary stops when the bus capacity is reached.