Dynamic interlining in bus operations

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2025

Subject Area

place - north america, mode - bus, infrastructure - fleet management, operations - scheduling, operations - reliability, operations - performance, operations - frequency

Keywords

Service reliability, Dynamic interlining, Bus operations, Simulation, Autonomous transit, Optimal dispatching

Abstract

The paper introduces and evaluates the concept of the dynamic interlining of buses. Dynamic interlining is an operational strategy for routes with a terminal station at a common hub, allowing a portion of (or all) the fleet to be shared among the routes belonging to the hub (shared fleet) as needed. The shared fleet is dispatched on an on-demand basis to serve scheduled trips on any route to avoid delays and regulate services. The paper examines systematically the impacts of dynamic interlining on service reliability. It formulates the dispatching problem as an optimization problem and uses simulation to evaluate the dynamic interlining strategy under a variety of operating conditions. Using bus routes in Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) as a case study, the strategy’s feasibility and factors that affect its performance are investigated. Results show that dynamic interlining can improve service reliability (increases on-time departures and decreases departure headways variability at the hub). The fraction of the fleet that is shared has the most dominant impact on performance. In the case where all buses are dynamically interlined, the performance improves as route frequency increases and more routes participate in the strategy.

Rights

Permission to publish the abstract has been given by SpringerLink, copyright remains with them.

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS