A real-time holding decision rule accounting for passenger travel cost

Holding has been extensively investigated as a
strategy to mitigate the inherently stochastic nature of public
transport operations. Holding focuses on either regulating
vehicle headways using a rule-based approach or minimizing
passenger travel cost by employing optimization models. This
paper introduces a holding decision rule that explicitly addresses
passenger travel cost. The decision to hold relies on the
passenger demand distribution along the line. The passenger
cost holding rule is tested using simulation for a high frequency
bus line in Stockholm, Sweden and is compared with a nocontrol
scheme and the currently used headway-based strategy.
The results indicate that the new decision rule results in
relatively minor reductions of passenger cost compared to the
currently adopted strategy, and that it allocates the greatest
share of holding time at the beginning of the route.