This report has two overall purposes. First, it provides a review of operations control principles and practices reported in the literature. Second, it reports the results of an operations control experiment whose objective was to maintain headways, or the time separation between buses on a route. The experiment was developed to explore a possible application of the automated Bus Dispatching System (BDS) recently implemented by Tri-Met, the transit provider for the Portland, OR metropolitan region. The main components of Tri-Met's BDS are as follows: automatic vehicle location (AVL) based upon global position system (GPS) technology, supplemented by dead reckoning sensors; voice and data communication within a pre-existing mobile radio system; on-board computer and a control head displaying schedule adherence to operators, detection and reporting of schedule and route deviations to dispatchers, and two-way, pre-programmed messaging between operators and dispatchers; automatic passenger counter (APC) technology; computer-aided dispatch (CAD) center. The BDS recovers very detailed operating information in real-time, and thus enables the use of a variety of control actions that would potentially yield substantial improvements in service reliability.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Tri-Met's Westside Light Rail Project

    Chow, R. / McCauley, P. / American Public Transit Association | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1996


    Evaluation of transit operations: data applications of Tri-Met's automated Bus Dispatching System

    Strathman, James G. / Kimpel, Thomas J. / Dueker, Kenneth J. et al. | Online Contents | 2002




    Automated Bus Dispatching, Operations Control, and Service Reliability: Baseline Analysis

    Strathman, James G. / Dueker, Kenneth J. / Kimpel, Thomas et al. | Transportation Research Record | 1999