Synchronized timetables for bus rapid transit networks in small and large cities

The quality of public transportation service has significant effects on the quality of urban life. In the course of frequency setting and timetabling as an important step in the public transportation planning process, synchronization gains significance and directly influences the utility and attractiveness of the system; therefore, a great deal of attention should be drawn to it in the whole planning process, especially in setting frequency and timetable. To this end, the present study proposes a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model to set timetables on a bus transit network with maximum synchronization and minimum number of fleet size. The proposed model is applicable to both small- and large-scale transit networks and is used for setting timetables on two samples of different sizes. A simple problem in this study was solved by General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) Software where the obtained timetable seemed quite reasonable. Moreover, the proposed model was employed to set timetables through the genetic algorithm on Tehran Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) networks as a real-life instance; then, the NSGA-II was used to obtain the Pareto optimal solutions of the problem for five different scenarios. Finally, the results showed that the proposed model was efficient in setting timetables on transit networks of different sizes. (C) 2021 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved.