Bus service time estimation model for a curbside bus stop

The bus service time at bus stop areas occupies a large proportion of the total on-road bus operational time. Curbside bus stop are very common in urban transit systems, and the occurrence of bus queues forming at the entry and departure area of bus stop is quite frequent. To estimate the service time at a curbside bus stop, a compound Poisson service time estimation model (CPSTM) is proposed. The CPSTM considers the interactions among arriving buses and number of boarding and alighting passengers. Realistic observational data are acquired for a representative bus stop. Four different scenarios are presented to estimate the total expected service time. The service time estimation of each bus line is obtained via the CPSTM, and the effectiveness of the proposed CPSTM is demonstrated. The results show that the employment of real-time data is not required for accurate service time estimation. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.