A real-time holding decision rule accounting for passenger travel cost

Holding has been extensively investigated as a strategy to mitigate the inherently stochastic nature of public transport operations. Holding focuses on either regulating vehicle headways using a rule-based approach or minimizing passenger travel cost by employing optimization models. This paper introduces a holding decision rule that explicitly addresses passenger travel cost. The decision to hold relies on the passenger demand distribution along the line. The passenger cost holding rule is tested using simulation for a high frequency bus line in Stockholm, Sweden and is compared with a no-control scheme and the currently used headway-based strategy. The results indicate that the new decision rule results in relatively minor reductions of passenger cost compared to the currently adopted strategy, and that it allocates the greatest share of holding time at the beginning of the route.