Bus Control Strategy Application: Case Study of Santiago Transit System

Buses have an inherent tendency to bunch due to randomness in passenger demand and congestion. Many sophisticated control strategies have been developed to reduce bus bunching, however, few of them have been implemented in high frequency real services. Building upon a control strategy comprised of a rolling horizon mathematical programming model that yields the optimal holding time that minimizes user-waiting times6, we have developed real-time software and implemented it on two bus services in Santiago using different technologies to communicate the instructions to bus drivers. The results presented in this paper are encouraging, on the days the system was implemented less bus bunching was observed, which translated in fewer headway-irregularity fines. Moreover lower passenger fare evasion was observed when the bus control strategy was used