Modeling Bus Stops in Transit Networks: A Survey and New Formulations

In this paper, we undertake a detailed study of the bus stop problem in congested transit networks. In the first part of the paper, we present and discuss the bus stop models existing in the literature. In the second part, we propose a new general model for which we prove a number of good properties and we give equivalent formulations. Then, we examine two special cases of the general model. In the first case, the line capacities are considered limited and therefore they can not be exceeded by the on-board passenger flows. In the second case, the strict capacity constraints are relaxed in order to obtain a stop model that can be easily integrated into an assignment model to predict the global passenger behavior in transit networks.