Public Transportation

This unique book explains how to think systematically about public transportation through the lens of physics models. The book includes aspects of system design, resource management, operations and control. It presents both, basic theories that reveal fundamental issues, and practical recipes that can be readily used for real-world applications. The principles conveyed in this book cover not only traditional transit modes such as subways, buses and taxis but also the newer mobility services that are being enabled by advances in telematics and robotics.

As every user knows buses tend to bunch. To alleviate this problem, transit agencies introduce slack into their schedules and then hold buses back to schedule at pre-established control points along their routes. Unfortunately, this practice retards buses and only works with low frequency systems; i.e., when the headways are long. For higher frequency systems, which effectively operate without a schedule, headway-based control strategies show promise but unfortunately, they also retard buses. To alleviate bus retardation in all its forms, transit signal priority (TSP) is commonly used....

This paper presents and tests a method to design hierarchical bus networks for large-scale polycentric urban areas. The method produces conceptual plans based on geometric idealizations of regional networks intended to serve medium-distance trips, and then adapts such conceptual plans into implementable designs. Also considered are a supportive backbone system for long distance trips and a last-mile system for local trips. The focus is the medium distance system since this system is not well understood for megacities. Mathematical optimization is used to develop the regional plans....