How to Improve the Transit Service with Integrated Operational Strategies Considering Emissions under Heterogeneous Demand

Abstract

Recently, traffic problems such as congestion and emission have been increasing. Transit travel is considered to be one of the effective ways to relieve these problems. The attractiveness of transit travel can be improved by integrating operational strategies with multitype services. Therefore, a study focusing on tapping the potential of integrated operational strategies, which combine local services, skip-stop services, and short-turning services, considering emissions under heterogeneous demand, was conducted. Two types of integrated service patterns were proposed. Pattern 1 comprised local services, skip-stop services, and short-turning services, all operating simultaneously and independently, while Pattern 2 comprised the combined local services and skip-stop services with a flexible route length. The estimation of heterogeneous travel demand for different services and high-resolution bus emissions based on short trips between stops and at stops was conducted. The optimized models to minimize system costs considering passengers, agencies, and environmental interests were developed to explore the effectiveness of integrated operational strategies for performing the transit service. The real-world cases of Bus Route 4 and Route 543 in Beijing, China, were studied. The performances of the proposed strategies under the two integrated service patterns were compared with the baseline. The results showed that the total costs of two integrated service patterns are reduced significantly, with a maximum reduction of above 30%. Moreover, under the route of limited vehicles and denes travel demand, Pattern 2 implementing skip-stop services in a flexible route length had more advantages over Pattern 1, where all three services existed simultaneously. The finding can be used to design the preferred transit development strategy and improve the service quality.