GENERIC BUS ROUTE SIMULATION MODEL AND ITS APPLICATION TO A NEW BUS NETWORK DEVELOPMENT FOR CAIEIRAS CITY, BRAZIL

The issue of adequate urban bus routes is very important to general population life quality. It is shown that in Brazil, 25% of the citizens from urban areas uses buses as the main transportation method. In general, bus routes are created and modified without proper methodology or analysis. Discrete Event Simulation is a paradigm that can take into consideration the variability and dynamic nature of bus routes and, therefore, provide valuable insights especially when one is trying to propose a change in an existing bus network. On the other hand, a simulation model for general bus routes is not easy to develop. The present work proposes a generic simulation model for radial networks in order to take into account data which is normally available at buses networks and, then, apply this model to the case of Caieiras city bus network redesign.