The paper investigates the efficiency of serving high demand transit corridors with connected semi-autonomous bus platoons in both bus and BRT services. Platooning facilitates higher capacity than conventional buses by forming virtual long buses out of multiple smaller vehicles, which may be particularly relevant in scenarios with large demand variations between peak and off-peak hours. The problem is formulated as a constrained optimization problem to minimize total system cost, which includes waiting cost, access cost, riding cost, operating cost and capital cost. For a single period with fixed demand, both analytical solutions and numerical examples are provided. Sensitivity analysis is carried out with regard to demand levels and capacity upper bound. The problem is generalized to a two-period problem considering peak and off-peak demand. Numerical results are provided with sensitivity analysis regarding demand level and ratio of peak/off-peak demand. Furthermore, the impact of a lower bound on service headway is investigated. The result shows that semi-autonomous vehicle platooning is competitive in medium and high-demand scenarios, with the potential of reduced user costs and operating costs at the expense of additional rolling stock costs. Minimum headway constraint, restricted vehicle size, and higher demand ratio all make semi-autonomous platooning more advantageous.

中文翻译：

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高需求公交走廊中联网半自动编队巴士服务的效率


本文研究了公交车和 BRT 服务中连接的半自动公交车排为高需求公交走廊提供服务的效率。通过用多辆小型车辆组成虚拟长巴士，队列行驶比传统巴士有更高的运力，这在高峰和非高峰时段需求变化较大的情况下尤其相关。该问题被表述为一个约束优化问题，以最小化总系统成本，其中包括等待成本、访问成本、乘坐成本、运营成本和资本成本。对于具有固定需求的单个时期，提供了解析解和数值示例。针对需求水平和容量上限进行敏感性分析。该问题被推广为考虑高峰和非高峰需求的两期问题。数值结果提供了有关需求水平和高峰/非高峰需求比率的敏感性分析。此外，还研究了服务间隔下限的影响。结果表明，半自动车辆编队在中高需求场景中具有竞争力，有可能以额外的机车车辆成本为代价降低用户成本和运营成本。最小车头时距限制、车辆尺寸限制以及更高的需求比都使得半自动编队行驶更具优势。