Real-time partway deadheading strategy based on transit service reliability assessment

This paper presents a partway deadheading strategy for transit operations to improve transit service of the peak directions of transit routes. This strategy consists of two phases: reliability assessment of further transit service and optimization of partway deadheading operation. The reliability assessment of further transit service, which is based on the current and recent service reliability, is used to justify whether or not to implement a partway deadheading operation. The objective of the second phase is to determine the beginning stop for a new service for the deadheaded vehicle by maximizing the benefit of transit system. A heuristic algorithm is also defined and implemented to estimate reliability of further transit service and to optimize partway deadheading operation. Then, the partway deadheading strategy proposed in this paper is tested with the data from a transit route in Dalian city of China. The results show the partway deadheading strategy with the reasonable parameters can improve transit service.