A cellular automaton model of public transport system considering control strategy

Concerning the public transport system, inspired by the organization of traffic flow on ant trails, a new cellular automaton model of public traffic is proposed in which the number of waiting passengers in the bus stop is regarded as an external pheromone. In the model, the buses would cooperate with other buses while driving and adjust their speeds based on the difference value between the estimated headway from the waiting passenger s information and the desired headway. Numerical simulation results show that the proposed model can reproduce clustering of the buses along the route. By incorporating a new control strategy, the model helps in reducing the undesirable tendency of clustering by dispersing the buses uniformly along the route, and decreasing the average number of waiting passengers in the public transport system. The system performance is then improved significantly with the control strategy, which has the extensive applicability and practical significance.