On demand public transport system

Abstract

In this dissertation, a bus transport system is designed using ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) technologies. This dissertation builds on the idea of having a customer based on-demand service. Multiple users request a transport service from different locations .and time and the system continuously adds these services together to provide an optimal route. Current systems in operation are mostly designed manually and optimised over a relatively long period of time. These systems are therefore characterised by almost static route timetables and capacities. The main task in the design of public transport systems is to maximise the number of customers and minimise the loss in operating the system. This project will study and propose a system where the bus routing, particularly during off-peak times, changes dynamically in response to demand. In this thesis, using C# with Microsoft's XNA framework, a program simulation of an intelligent bus route system was designed and tested, using several optimisation algorithms to determine the most effective and reliable bus route. Using heuristic methods, several metrics were considered and using an implementation of the Dijkstra (shortest path) algorithm as the main method and a Genetic algorithm, the system is build using a single bus carriageway. Data from the simulation was generated to compare results with the different algorithms used. Results were taken for the average waiting time from requesting a service until being picked up by the bus and the journey time taken to reach destination. The journey time was then compared with the optimal time if a direct route was taken, i.e. the time it takes if the route was generated to accommodate that user only, to produce a ratio of Gourney time: best time). This is useful to compare which is the best algorithm.