Evaluation of bus terminals using microscopic traffic simulation

Abstract: Traffic simulation is a safe and efficient tool to investigate infrastructural changes as well as traffic conditions. This master thesis aims to analyse a microscopic traffic simulation method for evaluation of bus terminal capacity. The evaluation is performed by investigating a case study of the bus terminal at Norrköping travel centre. The analysed method, referred to as terminal logic in the thesis, uses a combination of time based and event based simulation. Through the combination of time and event, it is possible to capture all movements within the terminal for individual vehicles. The simulation model is built in the software Vissim. A new travel centre for Norrköping is under development. Among the reasons for a new travel centre is the railway project Ostlänken in the eastern part of Sweden. An evaluation of the bus terminal is interesting due to a suspicion of overcapacity and the opportunity of redesigning. To investigate both the terminal capacity and the terminal logic, three scenarios were implemented. Scenario 1: Current design and frequency Scenario 2: Current design with higher frequency Scenario 3: Decreased number of bus stops with current frequency The results from the scenarios confirm the assumption of overcapacity. The capacity was evaluated based on several different measures, all indicating a low utilization. Even so, the utilization was uneven over time and congestion could still occur when several buses departed at the same time. This was also seen when studying the simulation, which showed congestions when several buses departed at the same time. The case study established the terminal logic to be useful when evaluating capacity at bus terminals. It provides a good understanding of how the terminal operates and captures the movements. However, it was time-consuming to adjust the logic to the studied terminal. This is a disadvantage when investigating more than one alternative. The thesis resulted in two main conclusions. Firstly, a more optimised planning of the buses at Norrköping bus terminal would probably be achievable and lead to less congestions at the exits. Secondly, the terminal logic is a good method to use when evaluating bus terminals but it is not straight forward to implement.