Bunching transition in a time-headway model of a bus route

A time-headway model is presented to mimic bus behavior on the bus route. The motion of a bus is described in terms of the time headway between its bus and the bus in front. We study the bunching behavior of buses induced by interacting with other buses and passengers. It is shown that the dynamical phase transitions among the inhomogeneous bunching phase, the homogeneous free phase, the coexisting phase, and the homogeneous congested phase occur with varying the initial time headway. We study the effect of not stopping at bus stops on the time-headway profile. It is found that the bunching transition lines are consistent with the neutral stability curves obtained by the linear stability analysis.