Optimal design and benefits of a short turning strategy for a bus corridor

We develop a short turning model using demand information from station to station within a single bus line-single period setting, aimed at increasing the service frequency on the more loaded sections to deal with spatial concentration of demand considering both operators’ and users’ costs. We find analytical expressions for optimal values of the design variables, namely frequencies (inside and outside the short cycle), capacity of vehicles and the position of the short turn limit stations. These expressions are used to analyze the influence of different parameters in the final solution. The design variables and the corresponding cost components for operators and users (waiting and in-vehicle times) are compared against an optimized normal operation scheme (single frequency). Applications on actual transit corridors exhibiting different demand profiles are conducted, calculating the optimal values for the design variables and the resulting benefits for each case. Results show the typical demand configurations that are better served using a short turn strategy.