Bus dwell time estimation at bus bays: A probabilistic approach

The conventional data-driven regression approaches cannot be used to formulate the bus dwell time at a bus bay because they are incapable of dealing with the interactions among buses, arrival passengers, and traffic on the shoulder lane. Firstly, this paper points out that the bus dwell time at a bus bay possessed a high degree of uncertainty originating from the merging behaviour of bus to the vehicles in the shoulder lane. Secondly, it develops a novel probabilistic methodology to estimate the bus dwell time, including a standard regenerative stochastic process to model the interactions among buses, arrival passengers, and traffic on the shoulder lane. A tangible procedure is also proposed to estimate the mean and variable of the random bus dwell time. A case study is carried out to show the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. Finally, an impact analysis is carried out to demonstrate the significance of an advisory sign "give way to buses".