Modelling the relationships between passenger demand and bus delays at Busway stations

Bus dwell time is traditionally considered as a function of the number of alighting and boarding passengers plus an amount of time for door opening and closing. This approach describes the delays caused to a bus at any bus stop; however, these could be less accurate for busway stations where more than one loading area is available. This is because these traditional dwell time models do not account for the crowd phenomenon of the busway station platform. This paper discusses the differences in boarding process at a bus stop and at a busway station. And based of these differences, a new methodology for estimation of bus dwell time at busway stations is proposed. For this study, data collection was performed at a busway station on the South East Busway in Brisbane, Australia and at suburban bus stops. Firstly, the sequence of activities performed by a passenger from viewing the desired bus to boarding the bus was divided into two parts: passenger - bus interface and passenger bus interaction. Later the effect of platform crowding on passenger - bus interface and passenger bus interaction was studied. Finally a dwell time model for buses at busway stations was developed. Based on the analysis, this paper concluded that at a busway station where boarding is predominant, an increase in platform crowd increases the passenger - bus interface duration. This increase in passenger - bus interface duration then leads to lost time for buses and hence increases the bus dwell time.