Bus Bridging Decision-Support Toolkit: Optimization Framework and Policy Analysis

Bus Bridging is the strategy most commonly applied in responding to rail service interruptions in North America and Europe. In determining the required number of buses and source routes, most transit agencies rely on ad-hoc approaches based on operational experience and constraints, which can lead to extensive delays and queue build-ups at affected stations. This thesis developed an optimization model, to determine the optimal number of shuttle buses and route allocation which minimize the overall subway and bus riders delay. The generated optimal solutions are sensitive to bus bay capacity constraints along the shuttle service corridor. The optimization model is integrated with a previously developed simulation tool that tracks the evolution of system queues and delays throughout the bus bridging process. A set of bus bridging policy guidelines were developed based on further analysis of the optimization model outputs using a Classification and Regression Tree (CART) model.