Comparative analysis of operation strategies in schedule design for a fixed bus route

This paper proposes a general model for the bus route schedule design (BRSD) problem considering the uncertainty in the bus travel times to minimize the expected total schedule deviation from a reliability standpoint. The preferences of bus operators are considered in the objective function. Based on the general model, four stochastic linear programming models are subsequently developed by successively incorporating different operation strategies; they include (1) no control strategy (NCS), (2) bus drivers' schedule recovery (DSR), (3) holding control strategy (HCS), and (4) both DSR and HCS (BRHS). Then, a Monte Carlo simulation based solution method is designed to solve these four models, respectively. Finally, numerical tests based on a real bus route are used for a comparative analysis of different operation strategies used in the BRSD. The results show that HCS and BRHS outperform other operation strategies in terms of the schedule deviation of the buses. Interestingly, HCS performs slightly better than BRHS when bus operators assume that later arrival at scheduled point is more harmful than earlier arrival. Compared to NCS, HCS can save objective function approximately 67.9% in all cases. In addition, operation strategies that could better fit a particular scenario are suggested.