Combinatorial optimization of bus lane infrastructure layout and bus operation management

• Main Authors: Xu Sun, Juan Wu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2017-09-01
• Series: Advances in Mechanical Engineering
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1177/1687814017703341

Transit priority is considered as an effective way to relieve traffic congestion. As an efficient measure of executing transit priority, the exclusive bus lane design problem has become a research hotspot in the field of urban transportation planning. The aim of this study is to find the optimal combination of bus lane infrastructure planning (such as exclusive bus lane layout) and bus operation management (such as bus frequency). This combinatorial optimization problem is formulated in the form of a multi-objective bi-level programming model that minimizes system travel time, total pollutant emission, and bus operating cost simultaneously. A solution framework that implements a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm is developed to efficiently solve the model. With an example network which is based on a part of Beijing’s road network, the proposed methodology is tested and its efficiency is verified by the numerical results.