Transportation Research Part A 148 (2021) 316–329

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Transportation Research Part A

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tra

Providing real-time bus crowding information for passengers: A

novel policy to promote high-frequency transit performance
Pengfei Wang a, Xuewu Chen a, *, Yue Zheng b, Long Cheng c, *, Yinhai Wang d, Da Lei a
a
Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Urban ITS, Jiangsu Province Collaborative Innovation Center of Modern Urban Traffic Technologies, School of
Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
b
Post Big Data Technology and Application Engineering Research Center of Jiangsu Province, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications,
Nanjing, China
c
Department of Geography, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281 S8, Ghent 9000, Belgium
d
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle 98195, United States

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Bus bunching is of particular concern and undesirable for both operators and passengers in high-
High-frequency transit frequency transit. In contrast to existing control methods, this paper proposes a novel control
Control policy policy, namely, providing real-time bus crowding information (BCI) for passengers. It is believed
Bus crowding information
that passengers would spontaneously distribute more evenly among buses and help to prevent bus
Passenger boarding choice
Passenger comfort
bunching with the provision of BCI accompanying arrival time information due to the following
mechanism. A proportion of passengers would be likely to wait a few more minutes for the next
bus when the current bus is crowded and the next bus is more comfortable, and the boarding
times of these passengers would make the next bus dwell longer and increase its headway from
the previous bus. We formulate bus motion models incorporating passenger boarding choice
under BCI to realize the policy in simulation experiments. The results demonstrate that the policy
can reduce operation instability by approximately 20% in terms of bus headway and single-trip
time. In addition, this policy can significantly reduce the in-vehicle crowdedness experienced
by passengers by up to 25% at the cost of small increases in the mean journey time in some cases.
The simulation experiments on a holding-controlled route also indicate that the proposed policy is
able to coordinate with holding well. A sensitivity analysis further confirms that the policy’s
performance is robust even if the passengers have low inclinations to choose the next bus. The
policy of providing BCI in this paper is especially effective for bus routes with high passenger
demand and may have great application potential in practice.

1. Introduction

In frequently serviced bus routes, passengers are more concerned about bus headway regularity than the actual punctuality of bus
arrival based on the schedule (Chen et al., 2009). Buses arriving with very large or very small headways, namely, bus bunching, is of
particular concern and undesirable for both operators and passengers. Bus bunching is inherently inevitable in transit operation due to
unstable collective bus motion. Despite using perfectly even departure frequencies, bus bunching can still occur as time elapses
(Daganzo, 2009), and this effect is explained as follows. When a bus is delayed from its schedule due to a small disturbance (e.g.,

* Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: chenxuewu@seu.edu.cn (X. Chen), long.cheng@ugent.be (L. Cheng).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2021.04.007
Received 21 June 2020; Received in revised form 18 January 2021; Accepted 9 April 2021
Available online 21 April 2021
0965-8564/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
P. Wang et al. Transportation Research Part A 148 (2021) 316–329

congestion or unexpected demand), it has to pick up more passengers at the downstream stops, and the boarding times of these
passengers further increase its headway. Conversely, the following bus will take on fewer passengers than normal, speeding it up. The
effect will be gradually amplified and propagated along the route as time passes, finally leading to bunching.
Strategies to maintain the regularity of bus systems have received an increasing amount of interest in recent decades. Various
corrective strategies, such as bus holding, speed control (Bie et al., 2020), stop-skipping (Liu et al., 2013), overtaking (Wu et al., 2017),
and signal priority (Estrada et al., 2016), have been developed to address bus bunching. Among them, bus holding is the most widely
adopted countermeasure. Two main approaches have been developed for the bus holding problem in previous literature, namely,
analytical and mathematical optimization (Berrebi et al., 2018). The first approach assigns holding times as closed-form functions of
bus arrival times (Daganzo, 2009; Daganzo and Pilachowski, 2011; Bartholdi and Eisenstein, 2012), while the second approach
consists of optimizing a weighted function of passenger waiting in mathematical programs that consider the dynamics of bus tra­
jectories (Delgado et al., 2009; Sánchez-Martínez et al., 2016; Dai et al., 2019). In particular, Delgado et al. (2012) proposed a control
policy named holding combined with boarding limits, in which the number of boarding passengers at any stop can be limited to in­
crease operational speed. The authors demonstrated that the proposed policy shows significant benefits in relation to purely holding
under short headway operation and high passenger demand. On the whole, bus holding shows good performance in avoiding bus
bunching and reducing total passenger journey time and has been successfully applied to many bus routes in practice. However,
holding may not be appropriate for some routes passing through busy corridors, where stops may not have enough space to implement
holding. In addition, routes with high bus loads are not very adaptive for holding (Liang et al., 2019). In this paper, we propose a novel
control idea that is extremely appropriate for routes running through busy corridors with high passenger demand, especially catering
to passengers who are pursuing comfort during travel.
Comfort is an important aspect of the bus riding experience. To provide a comfortable travel experience, adequate vehicles and
effective scheduling are essential (Yan et al., 2012). Due to COVID-19, there is a pressing need for transit agencies to avoid passenger
crowding. With the development of intelligent transportation systems, providing bus crowding information (BCI) has become a
feasible and effective way to promote passenger comfort by assisting passengers in choosing less-crowded vehicles. In recent years,
several studies have focused on bus load measurement and crowding evaluation (Tirachini et al., 2013; Zuo et al., 2019; Yap et al.,
2020), and these studies can be regarded as fundamental works for providing BCI. In practice, Google Maps currently provides
empirical BCI by inviting passengers to evaluate bus crowdedness immediately after riding. Though relatively accurate real-time bus
loads can be obtained using an automatic passenger counting (APC) system (Sanchez-Martinez et al., 2018), few agencies or companies
currently provide real-time BCI. If real-time BCI is provided for passengers accompanying arrival time information, we believe this
information will have additional benefits in improving the service level and maintaining the regularity of bus systems.
With the provision of BCI (hereinafter referred to as real-time BCI) and arrival time information, passengers would be likely to
choose to wait a few more minutes for the next bus if the current bus is crowded and the next bus is more comfortable. Actually, these
circumstances are common in practice since the first bus in a bunch usually carries more passengers. The boarding times of these
passengers would make the next bus dwell longer and increase its headway from the previous bus. Theoretically, the closer two
consecutive buses are, the more passengers choose the later bus. As a result, passengers spontaneously distribute more evenly and help
to prevent bus bunching. In this case, passengers are regarded as a control tool for speeding up the delayed vehicle and holding the
following vehicle. BCI is necessary to trigger the control effects of passengers because passengers probably would not wait for the next
bus without knowing its real-time crowding condition. In this paper, we assume that the arrival time information is already available.
The main differences between our policy and the policy of holding combined with boarding limits in Delgado et al. (2012) are that
passenger behaviors are voluntary and passengers can make decisions based on their willingness, which means that individuals who
care more about comfort can keep waiting and individuals in a hurry can board the first bus. In contrast, despite the fact that the policy
in Delgado et al. (2012) shows great performance, boarding limits, as the authors pointed out, may be difficult to implement in practice
since a portion of passengers are forced to wait longer, which could lead to dissatisfaction toward the transit service.
How to provide reliable real-time BCI is an interesting topic and Jenelius (2019) and Jenelius (2020) have recently performed great
work on this topic. To provide real-time BCI, historical APC data, real-time automated vehicle location (AVL) data, and real-time APC
data are considered necessary. Besides, it generally requires that passenger loads or crowding levels be predicted several stops ahead
from the current bus locations. Jenelius (2020) discussed the accuracy of several personalized crowding information based on different
data availabilities, and found that using the real-time AVL and real-time APC data make the information accuracy improved
substantially.
This paper assumes that BCI can be effectively provided for passengers and studies the effects of the policy on high-frequency
routes. In our previous work (Wang et al., 2018), we demonstrated that the proposed policy can achieve better headway regularity,
as expected, by simulating a real bus route both in the morning peak and off-peak. However, we did not answer the following three
questions in that work: (1) Though the proposed policy can achieve better headway regularity, part of the passengers who choose the
next bus need to wait more minutes. Does this policy have a positive effect from the perspective of total passengers? (2) Holding is
probably the most common control strategy in bus operation. Can the proposed policy be used in conjunction with holding strategy?
(3) The proposed policy depends on the crowdedness of buses and passengers’ willingness to skip a bus. How much passenger demand
is, and to what extent must people be willing to skip a bus for the strategy to be effective? To answer these questions and study the
policy comprehensively, the main contributions of this paper include the following:

(1) Evaluating the proposed policy from the perspectives of both operators and passengers, where two metrics, i.e., a comfort index
(CI) and cost function (CF), are defined to measure the policy effect by considering passenger in-vehicle comfort.
(2) Investigating the adaptability and effect of the proposed policy on holding-controlled routes.

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(3) Conducting a sensitivity analysis of the policy for different passenger demands and passenger behaviors under BCI.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces bus motion models incorporating passenger choice under BCI.
Section 3 describes simulation experiments in terms of the framework, parameter calibration, simulation scenarios, tested strategies,
and evaluation metrics. Section 4 presents the simulation results and analyzes the performance from the perspectives of both operators
and passengers. Section 5 presents sensitivity analyses of the proposed policy. Conclusions and implications are discussed in the final
section.

2. Methodology

In this section, we formulate bus-focused stochastic models to reproduce bus motion considering the randomness of running time,
passenger demand, and bus load. Then, a binary logit model is built to model passengers’ boarding choices under BCI.

2.1. Assumptions

The developed bus motion models incorporating passenger choice under BCI consider the following assumptions:

(1) One direction on a noncyclic bus route is considered. The bus fleet is assumed to be adequate enough to maintain the given
departure frequency.
(2) Buses serve all stops, and overtaking is not permitted.
(3) BCI is measured without error. With the provision of BCI, all passengers refer to the BCI through either a screen on a platform or
a mobile phone.

2.2. Bus motion models

Consider a bus route equipped with s = 1...S bus stops and on which n = 1...N bus trips depart in accordance with a scheduled
headway H. Let Tn,s be the departure time of bus n from stop s. The departure time of the first bus from the originating stop is set as
T1,1 = 0, and the actual departure times of subsequent buses Tn,1 are considered to have a uniform deviation from their schedules
between − Δ and Δ as follows:
Tn,1 = H(n − 1) + δ ⋅ Δ(n = 2, 3, ..., N) (1)

with uniformly distributed δ ∈ [ − 1, 1]. Let dn,s denote the dwell time of bus n at stop s and tn,s denote the travel time of bus n on link s
between stops s and s + 1. The departure time of bus n from stop s +1 is:
Tn,s+1 = Tn,s + tn,s + dn,s+1 (2)

The bus running time on link tn,s is assumed to follow a lognormal distribution with a mean of μt and a standard deviation of σ t .
Srinivasan et al. (2014) confirmed that lognormal distributions fit link travel times well for different road types based on empirical
data:
( )
lntn,s ∼ N μ, σ 2 (3)

where μ and σ are the parameters of the lognormal distribution and are calculated from μt and σt . The dwell time dn,s consists of two
parts. One is the time for buses to open and close the doors, noted as a constant r0 . The other is the actual loading time, which depends
on the numbers of boarding passengers bn,s and alighting passengers an,s . Buses on high-frequency routes are usually equipped with two
doors, and boarding and alighting happen simultaneously, so the loading time depends on the larger of the boarding time and alighting
time. Hence, the dwell time dn,s is given by:
( )
dn,s = r0 + max rb ⋅ bn,s , ra ⋅ an,s (4)

where rb and ra are the average boarding and alighting times per passenger, respectively.
Passengers arrive at stops randomly, so passenger arrival is supposed to follow a Poisson distribution. Let hn,s denote the time
between departures of buses n − 1 and n, namely, the headway. Supposing that the passenger arrival rate at stop s is λs , the number of
passengers ban,s who arrive during the headway is given by:
( )
ban,s ∼ P λs hn,s (5)

The boarding demand is not only from ban,s but also from passengers who are left behind by the previous bus due to bus capacity
constraints. Let ln,s be the number of passengers who are left behind by bus n. The boarding demand bdn,s at stop s is given by:

bdn,s = ban,s + ln− 1,s (6)

The actual number of boarding passengers bn,s cannot exceed the remaining bus capacity. Let C be the bus capacity and Ln,s be the

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load of bus n on link s; then,

( )
bn,s = min bdn,s , C − Ln,s− 1 + an,s (7)

The number of passengers left behind by bus n is determined by ln,s = bdn,s − bn,s . To obtain the number of alighting passengers an,s ,
the riding distance of each passenger is modeled as follows. The riding distance (represented as the number of traveled stops) can be
assumed to approximately follow a Poisson distribution on long-length routes (Navick and Furth, 1994). This is because the bus travel
mode is most attractive for passengers who have medium travel distances. The parameter λD in the Poisson distribution is equal to the
average riding distance, denoted as D (stops). It is worth noting that the average riding distance of passengers who board near the end
of the route should no longer be D; thus, λD is assumed to decrease linearly when s > S − D. Altogether, the riding distance Ds of a
passenger boarding at stop s is given by:
{
D s≤S− D
Ds ∼ P(λD ) where λD = (8)
S− s s>S− D

Similarly, the passenger arrival rate λs at stop s should also be modified when the stop is near the end of the route. Let λ denote the
average passenger arrival rate at a stop; then, λs is given by:
{
λ s≤S− D
λs = (9)
λ(S − s)/D s > S − D

Given the riding distance of each boarding passenger, the number of alighting passengers an,s is easy to obtain by calculating the
number of passengers whose alighting stop is s as follows:
∑
s− 1
an,s = ξs−n,i i (10)
i=1

where ξs−n,i i denotes the number of passengers who board at stop i and ride s − i stops.
Finally, the bus load Ln,s is updated by:
Ln,s = Ln,s− 1 + bn,s − an,s (11)

Ln,s is one of the judgment bases when passengers make boarding choices, which will be discussed in detail in the next subsection.

2.3. Passenger boarding choice model under BCI

A binary logit model is implemented to model passengers’ boarding choices between the first and second arriving buses under BCI.
The binary logit model is based on random utility theory and assumes that an individual makes a decision dependent on a utility
function and chooses the alternative that maximizes the utility of the individual (Cheng et al., 2019). The probability that individual i
selects bus n +1 over bus n can be expressed as:
Pi (n + 1) = P(Ui (n + 1) > Ui (n) ) (12)
The utility function U is composed of two parts: a deterministic part V and random error part ε. The utility function of bus j for
individual i can be expressed as:
Ui (j) = Vi (j) + εij j = n, n + 1 (13)

The deterministic utility function V of bus j depends on the waiting time for that bus and its level of crowding. The level of crowding
is considered to be a discrete variable corresponding to multiple levels based on the bus load Ln,s , e.g., seat available, slightly crowded,
and very crowded. Here, we do not consider the socioeconomic characteristics of passengers. That is,
Vi (j) = βw wj + βc cj j = n, n + 1 (14)

where wj is the waiting time for bus j, cj is the vector of the level of crowding and consists of multiple binary variables, and βw and βc are
the coefficients to be estimated. Given that passengers generally make decisions when the first bus has arrived, wj is set to zero for the
first arriving bus (n); then, wj = the additional waiting time for the second bus when j = n + 1.
The binary logit model assumes that the random error part ε in Eq. (13) is independent and identically distributed with a Gumbel
distribution; then, the probability that individual i will select bus n + 1, Pi (n +1), is given by:

eVi (n)
Pi (n + 1) = (15)
eVi (n) + eVi (n+1)
Since the probability of selecting the next bus is independent of individuals, we denote Pi (n +1) at stop s as pn,s . Every passenger’s
boarding choice is assumed to be independent from each other. Among the passengers initially waiting for bus n at stop s, ban,s , the
number of passengers choosing the next bus χ n,s follows a binomial distribution as follows:

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( )
χ n,s ∼ B ban,s , pn,s (16)

Here, passengers board either the current bus or the next. It is assumed that no one chooses subsequent buses or other travel modes.
Thus, the actual number of passengers trying to board bus n at stop s, b*n,s , is given by:
( )
b*n,s = ban,s − χ n,s + χ n− 1,s (17)

Returning to the bus running models, ban,s in Eq. (5) should be replaced by b*n,s when BCI is provided for the route.

3. Simulation experiments

3.1. Simulation framework

A high-frequency bus service is simulated in this section by a program written in MATLAB. Fig. 1 outlines the general framework of
the simulation program. The program iteratively computes the departure times of all buses from each stop instead of computing the bus
positions at every fixed time step.
Thirty stops are assumed on the simulated bus route. Each simulation run has 30 bus trips. There may be boundary errors in the first
and last bus trips. Specifically, the first bus trip has no passenger inputs, so we need to set a constant dwell time to make the system run.
Passengers waiting for the last bus trip have no other option than to board even if the last bus trip is crowded. Therefore, the first 4 and
last 4 bus trips are dropped, and only the middle 22 bus trips are considered when evaluating the system performance.
The bus running time on link tn,s follows a lognormal distribution with a mean of 90 s. The standard deviation of tn,s takes two levels
of value, as discussed in the next section. Following Delgado et al. (2012), the bus capacity C is 100. The time for opening and closing
doors r0 is set to 10 s according to Sun et al. (2014). The average boarding time per passenger rb is a critical parameter in this research
since the boarding time of transfer passengers functions as the holding tool. We adopt an rb value of 2.5 s according to Fernandez et al.
(2010) and Tirachini (2013). The average alighting time per passenger ra is usually 0.5 s less than rb (Hans et al., 2015b) and is 2.0 s in
this paper. The average riding distance D is considered to be 1/3 of the route length, namely, 10 stops. For each single experiment, we
execute 100 simulation runs to reduce randomness.

3.2. Parameter calibration in the passenger boarding choice model

The results from a stated preference (SP) survey are utilized to calibrate the parameters in the model of passenger boarding choice.
The survey was conducted by Yu et al. (2015) in Dalian City, China, between 6:30:00 and 8:00:00 on weekdays in November 2012,
with approximately 700 respondents participating. The passengers waiting for a high-frequency route on the platforms were the target
respondents. The study classified bus crowding into 4 categories, i.e., seat available, not crowded, slightly crowded and very crowded.
The respondents were asked to choose between the first and second buses in different situations, such as: If the first bus to arrive is very

Fig. 1. Flow chart of the framework of the simulation program.

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Table 1
Coefficient estimation for the passenger boarding choice model.
Coefficient Corresponding variable Estimation result t-value

βw Waiting time for the bus (min) − 0.289 − 11.52*

βc Level of crowding
βc0 Seat available Base Base
βc1 Not crowded − 1.702 − 9.70*
βc2 Slightly crowded − 3.325 − 13.28*
βc3 Very crowded − 4.627 − 13.58*
Log-likelihood function = -453 Adjusted rho-square = 0.267
*
Significant at the 99% confidence interval.

Table 2
Simulation scenarios.
Scenario Running time uncertainty Frequency

1 High High
2 Medium High
3 High Medium
4 Medium Medium

crowded and the second bus is not crowded and you only need to wait 3 more minutes for the second bus to arrive, would you to wait for the
second bus? A total of 18 situations were investigated, and the detailed survey results are shown in the Appendix.
Stata software (version 15.0) is selected to calibrate the parameters. The estimation results of the binary logit model are presented
in Table 1. Following Yu et al. (2015), a bus size with 27 seats is adopted in the simulation, and the four levels of crowding correspond
to certain load intervals in this paper. Specifically, seat available stands for a passenger load of less than 27, not crowded for [27,40],
slightly crowded for [40,55], and very crowded for 55 or more.

3.3. Scenarios

The effectiveness of the proposed policy is evaluated under four scenarios, as shown in Table 2. The scenarios are different in two
aspects, namely, running time uncertainty and frequency.
As mentioned before, the bus running time on links is drawn from a lognormal distribution with a mean of 90 s. Following Delgado
et al. (2012) and Dai et al. (2019), the distribution has a coefficient of variation of 0.4 under high-uncertainty circumstances and a
coefficient of variation of 0.2 under medium-uncertainty circumstances. In other words, the standard deviations of the running time on
links are 36 s and 18 s, respectively. In addition, it is more difficult to make departure times adhere to schedules under high-uncertainty
circumstances (Hans et al., 2015a). Thus, the deviation from the schedule is set as Δ = 0.2H and Δ = 0.1H for the two circumstances,
respectively.
The departure headway H is 5 min under high-frequency circumstances and 10 min under medium-frequency circumstances. To
achieve similar bus loads, the passenger arrival rate λ is set to 0.7 and 0.4 passengers per minute for the two circumstances,
respectively.

3.4. Control strategies

We try to evaluate the effects of providing BCI on a bus system’s performance, so routes without and with BCI are both tested. In
addition, bus holding is an important control strategy for bus systems and has been widely studied and applied in practice for years.
Essentially, the proposed policy in this paper is a special form of holding that makes the current bus speed up and holds the next bus.
The remaining questions are as follows: (1) Can the proposed policy coordinate with traditional holding control well? (2) What is the
effect of the proposed policy on a holding-controlled route? For this purpose, two other strategies, i.e., holding and holding with BCI,
are also tested in this research. The four strategies are listed as follows.
No control. That is, the spontaneous evolution of the system. No control action is taken along the route, and no BCI information is
provided for passengers.
With bus crowding information (WBCI). Passengers can view BCI on platforms or on their smartphones and make boarding
choices between the current bus and next bus.
Holding. A two-way-looking self-equalizing holding method is adopted since it shows good performance on high-frequency routes.
Zhang and Lo (2018) proved that this method can self-equalize headways under deterministic bus running times and reduce headways
to a certain level under dynamic running times. The method holds a bus when its headway is less than the headway of the following
bus, and the holding time τn,s of bus n is given by half of the difference between the backward headway hn+1,s and forward headway hn,s
as follows:

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( ( )/ )
τn,s = max 0, hn+1,s − hn,s 2 (18)

where hn+1,s needs to be predicted by using the deterministic form of the bus motion models in Section 2.2.
Stop 15 is chosen as the control point on the simulated bus route. As shown in Dai et al. (2019), the two-way-looking self-equalizing
holding method tends to overreact to large headway differences, resulting in long holding times. These long holding times try to
regularize headways at the cost of large on-board delay but ignore the randomness of running times, so a maximum holding time is
recommended. In our experiment, a maximum holding time of 120 s is adopted.
Holding with BCI (HWBCI). Providing BCI for passengers on the above holding-controlled route.
WBCI and HWBCI are collectively called BCI strategies in this paper. It should be noted that we do not make a comparison between
WBCI and holding since the performance of holding is highly dependent on the holding method and selection of holding points.
Another reason is that providing BCI does not conflict with holding. We can combine these strategies in an appropriate way if suc­
cessful rather than choose one of them.

3.5. Evaluation metrics

The system performance is evaluated from the perspectives of both passengers and operators. From the perspective of operators, the
headway variation and distribution of running times of bus trips are analyzed to evaluate the system variability mainly by the metric of
standard deviation. Since a bus trip considered in this research is a single trip in a cycle, the running time is hereinafter called the
single-trip time. In addition, another metric to measure the headway variation at a single stop is adopted and shown as follows.
The squared coefficient of variation of headways, denoted as CV 2 , is given by Eq. (19). CV2 has a proportional relation to the
average passenger waiting time (Newell and Potts, 1964). CV 2 = 0 means buses are evenly spaced, and CV2 = 1 means a serious
bunching case such as all buses traveling in pairs.
Var(hs )
CV 2 (hs ) = (19)
E2 (hs )

where hs is the headways at stop s.

From the perspective of passengers, four different indices are calculated regarding passenger time costs. In addition to time, the
comfort level of passengers on board is another aspect worthy of consideration. The indices determined from the perspective of
passengers are listed as follows:
First waiting time: the waiting time for the first bus to arrive.
Extra waiting time: extra waiting time of passengers who cannot board the first bus due to capacity constraints or passengers who
choose to pass on the first bus under BCI.
On-board time: passengers’ on-board time from the point they board to the point they alight.
Journey time: total journey time, including first waiting time, extra waiting time, and on-board time.
Comfort index. The CI of a passenger is defined as follows. Suppose a passenger on bus n boards at stop p and alights at stop q. The
CI of the passenger is the average bus load on the links from stop p to stop q as follows:
q− 1
1 ∑
CI = Ln,s (20)
q − p s=p

The CI reflects the average crowdedness during a passenger’s whole trip. For the bus size in this paper, a CI less than 27 means that
the passenger is very likely to have a seat for most of his trip.
Cost function. The CF of a passenger is based on the utility function of passenger boarding choice presented in Section 2.3, in which
passenger waiting time and on-board comfort are considered together. Passenger on-board time is not included in the CF because our
proposed policy is supposed to have little impact on passenger on-board time. In addition, passenger on-board time highly depends on
the riding distance setting. In contrast to the utility function in Eq. (14), the level of crowding passengers experience may vary during
their trips, so an average utility function regarding in-vehicle comfort is calculated similar to the definition of the CI. The utility
function V of a passenger’s trip from stop p to stop q is given by:
q− 1
( ) 1 ∑
V = β w wf + we + β ⋅ cn,s (21)
q − p s=p c

where wf and we denote the first and extra waiting times of the passenger, respectively, cn,s is the vector of the crowding level of the bus
(n) that the passenger is riding at stop s, and βw and βc are the coefficients estimated in Section 3.2.
The CF of a passenger is then obtained by dividing V by βw as follows:
CF = V/βw (22)
The CF can be explained as a kind of equivalent waiting time considering passenger in-vehicle comfort. Given that V and βw are both
negative, the CF is a positive number, and obviously, a greater CF means a lower level of service in one’s trip.

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Table 3
Bus headway and single-trip time under the four strategies for scenarios 1 to 4.
Scenario Strategy Headway (s) Single-trip time (s)

Mean Std. dev. Reduction in std. dev. Mean Std. dev. Reduction in std. dev.

1 No control 300 225 / 3334 256 /

WBCI 301 188 16.3% 3272 200 22.0%
Holding 301 196 / 3365 219 /
HWBCI 300 169 13.9% 3330 186 15.1%
2 No control 300 150 / 3233 155 /
WBCI 300 116 22.6% 3219 115 25.6%
Holding 301 118 / 3307 128 /
HWBCI 301 97 17.9% 3299 103 19.5%
3 No control 599 286 / 3315 254 /
WBCI 600 230 19.5% 3286 210 17.3%
Holding 599 241 / 3387 226 /
HWBCI 599 218 9.5% 3369 200 11.5%
4 No control 599 157 / 3281 148 /
WBCI 600 128 18.7% 3283 116 21.5%
Holding 601 118 / 3380 115 /
HWBCI 601 105 10.7% 3383 103 10.4%

Fig. 2. Squared coefficients of variation of headways under the four strategies for scenario 1.

4. Results and analyses

4.1. Headway variation

Table 3 presents the mean and standard deviation of bus headways at all stops for different control strategies and scenarios. Re­
ductions in standard deviations are also reported for the BCI strategies by comparing them to their respective baseline strategies. The
results show that WBCI can reduce the standard deviation of headways by approximately 20% for all scenarios. Though the reductions
yielded by HWBCI are smaller than those by WBCI since holding achieves lower headway variabilities, HWBCI shows the best headway
regularity for all scenarios. The mean headways are always equal to the departure headways even with no control, so we do not see the
reductions in mean headways appearing in Delgado et al. (2012) and Sánchez-Martínez et al. (2016), where loop routes are analyzed
and the headways at the departure stops are not certain.
To further study the headway variation at different stops, Fig. 2 plots CV 2 at each stop for scenario 1 as an example. The solid lines
represent the mean CV 2 obtained from 100 simulation runs, and the vertical lines depict the values of standard deviations. Fig. 2(a)
shows that CV 2 under WBCI differs from that with no control starting from stop 7, where on-board passengers accumulate to a certain

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Fig. 3. Single-trip time distributions under different control strategies for scenario 1.

Table 4
Passenger time cost, comfort index and cost function under the four strategies for scenarios 1 to 4.
Scenario Strategy α1 Mean first Mean extra Mean on- Mean Mean Reduction in Mean cost Reduction in
waiting waiting board journey comfort mean CI (%) function (CF) mean CF (%)
2
time (s) time (s) time (s) time (s) index (CI) (std. dev.)
(std. dev.)

1 No / 227 0 1004 1231 45.0(19.3) / 13.0(7.2)

control
WBCI 21.7% 209 32 981 1222 33.8(9.1) 24.9 9.7(4.9) 25.4
Holding / 197 0 1004 1201 39.5(17.1) / 11.1(6.9)
HWBCI 19.8% 185 32 994 1211 31.6(8.1) 20.0 9.0(4.7) 18.9
2 No / 179 0 975 1154 36.9(12.6) / 10.2(5.6)
control
WBCI 14.7% 170 31 965 1166 32.0(6.6) 13.3 8.4(3.5) 17.6
Holding / 157 0 996 1153 33.5(10.8) / 8.7(5.0)
HWBCI 13.7% 153 31 993 1177 30.1(6.2) 10.1 7.8(3.5) 10.3
3 No / 355 0 986 1341 41.8(13.9) / 14.8(7.2)
control
WBCI 11.8% 343 44 976 1363 37.0(8.3) 11.5 13.2(5.5) 10.8
Holding / 327 0 1004 1331 38.9(12.5) / 13.4(6.6)
HWBCI 10.6% 320 43 1000 1364 35.7(8.0) 8.2 13.0(5.7) 3.0
4 No / 317 0 975 1291 38.0(9.9) / 13.1(5.6)
control
WBCI 6.8% 311 34 971 1316 36.3(6.8) 4.6 12.5(4.4) 4.6
Holding / 297 0 1006 1303 36.1(8.9) / 12.1(5.1)
HWBCI 5.9% 293 31 1007 1331 35.0(6.2) 3.0 12.2(4.6) − 0.8
1
α is the proportion of passengers choosing the next bus due to BCI.
2
Reduction in mean CI and reduction in mean CF are calculated for the BCI strategies by comparing them to their respective baseline strategies.

number and passengers on the platform start to choose the next bus. The uptrend of CV 2 under WBCI is slower than that with no
control, with the value ending at 0.6 versus 1.1 at stop 30. Additionally, the deviations of CV 2 under WBCI are smaller than those with
no control, indicating that the headways are more stable under WBCI. Fig. 2(b) illustrates similar phenomena, but the differences
between HWBCI and holding are not as significant as those in Fig. 2(a).

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4.2. Single-trip time distribution

Table 3 also presents the mean and standard deviation of single-trip times across all bus trips under different strategies. Addi­
tionally, Fig. 3 plots the distribution of single-trip times for scenario 1 in a more intuitive way, as an example. Minor reductions in the
mean single-trip time under the BCI strategies are observed in Table 3, mainly because of the influence of the overtaking restriction
under the baseline strategies. Table 3 also shows that WBCI can reduce the standard deviation of single-trip times by approximately
20% for all scenarios, and HWBCI presents the lowest single-trip time variability. As shown in Fig. 3, the distributions of single-trip
times are more concentrated near the means under the BCI strategies, and extremely large single-trip times (such as more than
3700 s) seldom occur. These results suggest that the policy of providing BCI is beneficial to operators since low variability of single-trip
times allows smoother and more robust planning and operation at terminals.

4.3. Passenger time cost, comfort index and cost function

Table 4 presents the passenger time cost, CI and CF yielded by the four strategies for scenarios 1 to 4. The reduction in the mean CI
and reduction in the mean CF are calculated for the BCI strategies by comparing them to their respective baseline strategies. The
proportion of passengers choosing the next bus due to BCI, denoted as α, is reported for the BCI strategies as well. The results show that
α is larger with higher bus running time uncertainty or departure frequency, reaching over 20% for scenario 1. The value of α under
HWBCI is slightly smaller than that under WBCI by 0–2% in each scenario since holding is able to reduce the variability of headways
and bus loads to a lower level.
The results of passenger time cost in Table 4 show that the policy of providing BCI has both positive and negative effects on
passenger journey time. On the one hand, the BCI strategies can reduce the first waiting time since the headway variability is lower.
The reductions are basically more significant with a greater α. In addition, the BCI strategies also reduce the on-board time slightly,
mainly resulting from the decrease in the bus single-trip time. On the other hand, the BCI strategies obviously lead to the emergence of
extra waiting time. The mean extra waiting time for scenarios 3 and 4 is longer than that for scenarios 1 and 2 since the headways in the
last two scenarios are doubled. For the composite outcomes, the mean journey time may be increased by less than 30 s by providing BCI
on the route, but the BCI strategies performs better with higher bus running time uncertainty or departure frequency, resulting in a
reduction in the mean journey time for scenario 1.
The CI and CF of passengers are two other vital indicators to evaluate the effects of the proposed policy. The standard deviations of
the CI and CF across all passengers are reported in brackets. The results show that the BCI strategies can reduce the mean CI signif­
icantly by up to 25% for scenario 1. The reductions are caused by a more uniform distribution of bus loads among vehicles, as the
standard deviations of the CI under the BCI strategies are approximately half of the initial values. The reduction in the CF is smaller
than the corresponding reduction in the CI for scenarios 3 and 4, because the CF further considers the negative effect of waiting time
caused by the BCI strategies. In addition, the reductions in the CI and CF yielded by HWBCI are smaller than those yielded by WBCI, but
HWBCI shows the best performance for almost all scenarios.
In summary, the policy of providing BCI can reduce the mean CI and mean CF by up to 25% at the cost of a small increase in the
mean journey time in some cases. The benefits are more significant with higher bus running time uncertainty or departure frequency.
Among these strategies, HWBCI performs best on both the CI and CF for almost all scenarios, and this finding implies that the proposed
policy is able to coordinate with holding well.

5. Sensitivity analysis

The results in Section 4 represent the situations with crowded buses and a 100% penetration rate of BCI. In this section, sensitivity
analyses of passenger demand and passenger behavior under BCI are conducted. The sensitivity analyses take scenario 1 as an example.

5.1. Passenger demand

In the sensitivity analyses, the passenger arrival rate λ varies from 0.2 to 0.8 (0.7 is the initial). The effects of the BCI strategies are
evaluated from the perspective of passengers by comparing the mean CF before and after providing BCI. Fig. 4 plots the results with
varying passenger demand, in which the α values are also presented as a reference.
The α line in Fig. 4(a) shows that some passengers begin to choose the next bus at λ = 0.3, from which an increasing number of
buses become full. WBCI can also reduce the CF of passengers from λ = 0.3, indicating that providing BCI can bring positive effects to
the system as long as there are passengers changing their behaviors due to BCI. The reductions basically become more significant with
increasing passenger demand despite some small decreases at high passenger demand. The decreases at high passenger demand (e.g.,
λ = 0.8) are probably because passengers have difficulty finding seats even with the help of BCI, weakening the improvements in the
CF achieved by WBCI. Fig. 4(b) presents the effects of HWBCI compared with holding. The results show that the reductions in the CF
are not as notable as those in Fig. 4(a), but similar variation patterns are also observed in Fig. 4(b).

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Fig. 4. Effects of the BCI strategies with varying passenger demand for scenario 1.

5.2. Passenger behavior under BCI

Passenger boarding choice under BCI may be different from one case to another, depending on passengers’ socioeconomic char­
acteristics, their trip purposes, the waiting environment on platforms, and even weather. Moreover, in practice, the actual number of
passengers choosing the next bus is related to the penetration rate (PR) of the BCI service. The survey results used to calibrate the
boarding choice model presented in Section 3.2 represent behaviors under an ideal situation with 100% PR and good waiting envi­
ronments and weather.
Here, we test two more circumstances for the factor of PR of BCI, i.e., 25% and 50% PR. Besides, we investigate more circumstances
where passengers weigh the waiting times differently by replacing the coefficient βw in Eq. (14) with a new one, β’w . Three more
circumstances are considered here, including β’w = 0.75βw , which may represent more senior passengers who care little about waiting
time in the bus line, β’w = 2βw , which may represent a low inclination to choose the next bus, and β’w = 3βw , which may represent
extremely bad weather conditions such as hot days in summer or most passengers are in a hurry. Table 5 presents the performance of
WBCI in 6 situations with different combinations of PR and β’w . The no-control situation is also listed for comparison. Five key metrics
are used to evaluate the performance of WBCI. The Δ values in brackets are the reductions in the metric compared with no control. It
should be noted that when calculating the CF using Eq. (21), βw is not replaced by β’w for the purpose of fair comparisons between
different situations.
The α values in Table 5 show that fewer passengers choose the next bus with lower PR and larger absolute values of β’w , which is
consistent with the intuitive judgment. In situations 2, 3 and 5, the coefficient of waiting time is fixed (β’w = βw ) and the PR varies from
100% to 25%. The results show that the performance metrics worsen as PR decreases. However, WBCI can still improve the perfor­
mance from the perspectives of both operators and passengers even when PR is only 25%. Comparing the Δ values under situation 5 to
situation 2, the benefits of BCI with PR = 25% can still achieve approximately 60% of ideal benefits with PR = 100%. For each PR,
through the comparisons between situations with different β’w (situation 1 vs 2, 3 vs 4, 5 vs 6), it is found that there is no significant
difference in performance between each pair, particularly from the perspective of operators. This indicates that although fewer
passengers choose the next bus when β’w is higher, the positive impacts from these passengers on the transit system are relatively stable.
This is probably because the passengers with higher β’w are more cautious about skipping a bus and only do so when the benefits are
more significant, then the positive effect of each skipping decision becomes larger.
In summary, the PR of BCI is an important influencing factor for the effects of the proposed policy. A situation with 50% PR could be
realistically expected, where the proposed policy can achieve approximately 80% of the benefits compared to the ideal situation with

Table 5
Performance of WBCI with different penetration rates of BCI and β’w for scenario 1.
Situation Description α Std. dev. of headway (Δ1) (s) Std. dev. of sing-trip time (Δ) (s) Mean CI (Δ) Mean CF (Δ)

0 No control / 225 256 45.0 13.0

1 PR = 100%,β’w = 0.75βw 23.3% 190 (35) 201 (55) 33.7 (11.3) 9.7 (3.3)
2(Initial) PR = 100%,β’w = βw 21.7% 188 (37) 200 (56) 33.8 (11.2) 9.7 (3.3)
3 PR = 50%,β’w = βw 15.4% 198 (27) 211 (45) 35.3 (9.7) 10.3 (2.7)
4 PR = 50%,β’w = 2βw 12.1% 196 (29) 208 (48) 36.1 (8.9) 10.6 (2.4)
5 PR = 25%,β’w = βw 9.5% 207 (18) 224 (32) 37.6 (7.4) 11.0 (2.0)
6 PR = 25%,β’w = 3βw 6.0% 211 (14) 224 (32) 39.4 (5.6) 11.6 (1.4)

1
Δ is the reduction in the metric compared with no control.

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Table 6
Proportion of passengers choosing the second bus under different situations.
Bus crowding Extra waiting time for the second bus (min) Proportion of passengers choosing the second bus (%)

First bus Second bus

Very crowded Seat available 10 89

5 94
3 98
Slightly crowded Seat available 10 81
5 91
3 95
Not crowded Seat available 10 9
5 44
3 61
Very crowded Not crowded 10 43
5 65
3 82
Slightly crowded Not crowded 10 21
5 39
3 77
Very crowded Slightly crowded 10 24
5 51
3 73

100% PR. On the other hand, it shows that passengers’ degree of care about waiting times is not a significant influencing factor,
indicating that the performance of the proposed policy is robust even if passengers have very low inclinations to choose the next bus.

6. Conclusions

Bus bunching, which leads to longer average passenger wait times and uneven distributions of passenger loads, is of particular
concern and undesirable for both operators and passengers in high-frequency transit. In this paper, we propose a novel control policy
that makes use of passengers’ behaviors, namely, providing real-time BCI for passengers. Bus motion models incorporating passenger
boarding choice under BCI are formulated to realize the policy in simulation experiments. The results show that providing BCI can
reduce operation instability by approximately 20% in terms of bus headway and single-trip time and can significantly reduce in-vehicle
crowdedness experienced by passengers by up to 25% at the cost of small increases in mean journey time in some cases. The simulation
experiments on a holding-controlled route indicate that the policy is able to coordinate with holding well. A sensitivity analysis over
passenger demand demonstrates that the proposed policy can bring positive effects to the system at any passenger demand as long as
there are passengers changing their behaviors due to BCI. The penetration rate (PR) of BCI among passengers is shown to be an
important influencing factor for the effects of the proposed policy, but the proposed policy can still achieve approximately 60% of the
benefits even when PR is only 25% compared to the ideal situation with 100% PR. In addition, the policy’s performance is robust even
if passengers have low inclinations to choose the next bus.
The proposed policy is appropriate for all high-frequency transit systems in which passenger demand exceeds the number of seats
provided in vehicles. To provide real-time BCI, bus agencies may need to equip their fleets with devices such as APC systems. With the
consideration of costs, it is unlikely and unnecessary for agencies to provide real-time BCI on each bus route. The results in this paper
show that the bus routes with higher bus loads, frequency, or running time variability, are suggested to provide real-time BCI. In
practice, bus routes passing through busy corridors with high passenger demand usually have the worst system regularity but
sometimes have difficulty implementing traditional control methods such as holding or speed control. The policy proposed in this
paper is especially effective for these routes and may have great application potential in the near future.
This study presents an evaluation framework for the benefits of providing real-time BCI. To realize the proposed policy, providing
accurate and reliable BCI is the primary task, which is worthy of further study in the future. In addition, the measurement errors of BCI
may create a discrepancy between actual and communicated crowding conditions, which could limit the effectiveness of BCI as a tool.
How to disseminate BCI to passengers in a reliable way and maximize the effects of the proposed policy is another interesting topic for
future investigation.
Several potential enhancements could be considered in future works. The passenger behaviors under BCI could be modeled more
comprehensively. For instances, some passengers may check the information before they arrive at the stops and then change the arrival
times to avoid crowded buses; long trip takers and short trip takers may evaluate acceptable waiting time differently; some passengers
would choose to wait for the next bus even in the absence of BCI. We applied a simple holding strategy in this study. The coordination
between the BCI strategy and holding when considering more complicated holding schemes is another future research direction.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Pengfei Wang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Writing - original draft. Xuewu Chen: Conceptualization, Validation,
Funding acquisition. Yue Zheng: Methodology, Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Long Cheng: Writing - review & editing.
Yinhai Wang: Resources, Supervision. Da Lei: Visualization.

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Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

This research is sponsored by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2020YFB1600502), Joint Funds
of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. U20A20330), and the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program
of Jiangsu Province (KYCX18_0143).

Appendix A

The proportions of passengers choosing the second bus in the survey in Yu et al. (2015) are listed in Table 6.

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