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This paper proposes a flexible rerouting strategy for the public transit to accommodate the spatio-temporal variation in the travel demand. Transit routes are typically static in nature, i.e., the buses serve well-defined routes; this results in people living in away from the bus routes choose alternate transit modes such as private automotive vehicles resulting in ever-increasing traffic congestion. In the flex-transit mode, we reroute the buses to accommodate high travel demand areas away from the static routes considering its spatio-temporal variation. We perform clustering to identify several flex stops; these are stops not on the static routes, but with high travel demand around them. We divide the bus stops on the static routes into critical and non-critical bus stops; critical bus stops refer to transfer points, where people change bus routes to reach their destinations. In the existing static scheduling process, some slack time is provided at the end of each trip to account for any travel delays. Thus, the additional travel time incurred due to taking flexible routes is constrained to be less than the available slack time. We use the percent increase in travel demand to analyze the effectiveness of the rerouting process. The proposed methodology is demonstrated using real-world travel data for Route 7 operated by the Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA).
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This content will become publicly available on May 19, 2026
Enhancing Underutilized Bus Routes with Advance Reservations and Semiflexible Routing
This paper seeks to improve an underutilized conventional bus route by converting it into a semiflexible transit system where passengers provide advance notice of their intended stops, allowing buses to skip downstream stops without demand by taking shortcuts. This approach increases stop density, reduces walking distances to and from bus stops, and maintains operational efficiency. To design this system, we develop optimization models that maximize the number of stops while adhering to tour duration and arrival time constraints. A case study in Allegany County, Maryland, demonstrates significant enhancements for routes that were both underutilized (where the probability of a stop lacking demand exceeded 45%) and had layouts conducive to substantial shortcuts. In these instances, the number of stops can be increased by up to 160%, with the actual improvement depending on route configuration, passenger demand, and advance notice requirements. Funding: Financial support from the the National Science Foundation [Grant 2055347] is gratefully acknowledged. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2024.0561 .
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- Award ID(s):
- 2055347
- PAR ID:
- 10632371
- Publisher / Repository:
- Transit Accessibility Gains (published online)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Transportation Science
- ISSN:
- 0041-1655
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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