Assessing the influence of public transit headway irregularity on passenger´s distribution

In many Chinese cities, because of the lack of transit priority mechanism and real-time control measures, transit headway regularity at bus stops is usually disturbed. Transit headway irregularity not only leads to longer waiting time but also affects passenger distribution in vehicles. How to reflect the influence of headway irregularity on passenger distribution of neighboring vehicles is the key issue addressed in this article. Firstly, the relationship between one vehicle´s headway at different stops was analyzed. Based on this, a model of vehicle passenger volume was established. Finally, a passenger variability rate model of neighboring buses is proposed to measure the uneven passenger distribution of neighboring vehicles. The model is calibrated through the case study of boarding and alighting survey on three bus routes, actual headway observation and time delay survey. The survey data analysis indicates that headway variability rate of neighboring vehicles is positively correlated with the passenger variability rate of two neighboring buses.