| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 運輸管理學系碩士班 === 97 === Many rural bus services are forced to close due to insufficient subsidy. However,
the essential public transportation services are still expected to provide in rural area
especially for the incapable, elderly, and young people. The network of bus service
can affect the operation efficiency and cost. The objective of this study is to redesign
the rural bus route network in order to reduce the operation cost and release the
financial pressure of government subsidy.
The OD patterns and travel demand characteristics of passengers in rural areas
are analyzed in the study. The results show that most of the OD patterns of rural bus
service are few-to-many, which are similar to school and commuter buses services.
Then, the abstract model- Vehicle Routing Problem used in school bus services is
modified to be a fundamental model to design new rural bus network.
Kaohsiung County is chose to be an empirical study area. Several new bus
networks are designed according to the OD table and different operation constraints.
The results show that Bus Company can save more than 23% of total system cost due
to reduce the total bus kilometers. For low demand area, two services strategies, they
are ‘direct route with low frequency’ and ‘trunk-transfer route with high frequency’
are evaluated in the study. The penalty cost causes the direct service is better than
transfer service in rural bus services. Beside, the study finds that the bus with capacity
less than 30 seats per bus is not economical for conventional rural bus services.
|
|---|
