Bus bunching: the case of Carris' transit line 758

João Maria Petinga de Almeida

Key information

Authors:

João Maria Petinga de Almeida (João Maria Petinga de Almeida)

Supervisors:

Filipe Manuel Mercier Vilaça e Moura (Filipe Manuel Mercier Vilaça e Moura); João António De Abreu e Silva (João António De Abreu e Silva)

Published in

06/04/2019

Abstract

One of the continual challenges faced by transit managers is how to provide better service in a dynamic operating environment. In the context of high-frequency services, in an ideal situation, all buses would be equally spaced along their line, resulting in even intervals between successive bus arrivals to a certain stop. However, in reality, there are many factors that hinder buses from keeping constant headways, such as irregular passenger demand and variations in traffic conditions. One of the extreme consequences of an irregular transit service is bus bunching (BB), in which two or more buses that should be evenly running along the same route arrive simultaneously at the same stop. This thesis explores the potential uses of automatic vehicle location (AVL) systems to better understand the operation of bus routes and the dynamics of service reliability. It creates visualization tools that allow the analysis of the regularity of the transit service in line 758 detailed down to the stop level, as well as the detection of BB occurrences, based on data provided by Carris from the month of May of 2018. Also, the developed model can be easily applicable to other routes. For the total of 4180 trips that were investigated in the regular weekdays, the model detected BB frequencies of 20 to 40% of the trips for each day. Several recommendations are made to the operator, including the tracking of the deviations of the departure headway from the terminal and the implementation (and validation) of preventive and proactive measures.