This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal.
Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
A Novel Demand-Responsive Customized Bus
Based on Improved Ant Colony Optimization
and Clustering Algorithms
Wanneng Shu
Abstract— The customized bus operating mode based on
passenger demand is an effective way to solve the problem of
bus services in low travel density areas such as urban fringe
areas, ensure the profitability of bus enterprises, and promote
the development of customized bus and other emerging bus.
First, this study introduces the concept and operating principle
of customized bus, determines the advantages and disadvantages
of customized bus, evaluates the relevant theories of customized
bus lines and station planning, and determines the principles of
customized bus lines and station planning. Second, according to
the characteristics of customized bus, this study proposes a novel
customized bus line and station planning method completely
based on passenger travel demand, including travel demand data
processing, traffic community division, joint station planning, the
establishment of a customized bus line planning model, and the
solution of the planning model. Finally, the proposed planning
method and improved ant colony optimization and clustering
are verified by simulation experiments. The experimental results
show that the station line planning method proposed in this
paper can better realize the line planning of demand-responsive
customized bus as well as meet diverse passenger travel needs.
Index Terms— Demand response, customized bus, route and
station planning, K-means clustering, ant colony.
I. I NTRODUCTION
W ITH the rapid growth of car ownership and gradual
improvement of the motorization level in major cities
worldwide, the contradiction between urban traffic demand
and supply is becoming increasingly prominent, and the result-
ing environmental pollution problem is becoming increasingly
serious. Presently, bus in many large cities is mainly based
on conventional bus and rail transit, and its service coverage
is limited. It is impossible to fully realize “door-to-door” ser-
vices. Additionally, there is only one service mode of bus sys-
tems, which poses great challenges in meeting the diversified
and personalized travel needs. Based on the above background,
a new bus service mode referred to as “customized bus” was
developed. Customized bus is a new bus service mode utilizing
Manuscript received September 16, 2021; revised November 17, 2021 and
December 31, 2021; accepted January 19, 2022. This work was supported
by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 62076106.
The Associate Editor for this article was W. Wei. (Corresponding author:
Yan Li.)
Wanneng Shu is with the College of Computer Science, South-Central
University for Nationalities, Wuhan 430074, China (e-mail: shuwan-neng@
whu.edu.cn).
Yan Li is with the College of Science, Huazhong Agricultural University,
Wuhan 430070, China (e-mail: ly@mail.hzau.edu.cn).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TITS.2022.3145655
1558-0016 © 2022 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1
and Yan Li
conventional bus and taxis tailored for people with similar
travel needs, such as travel starting points and travel times [1].
Citizens can provide their travel needs through customized
bus online platforms. Bus companies design routes according
to their needs and provide this information to passengers in
a timely manner. Owing to the advantages of no transfer,
comfortable riding environment, high punctuality rate, and
convenient bus lane, customized buses are favored by the
majority of travelers; this has influenced many private car
owners to change their travel mode to customized buses,
effectively alleviating the problems of urban traffic congestion
and air pollution. As an important part of the customized bus
system, the system planning effectiveness plays a significant
role in the operation of the entire customized bus system.
As a new bus service mode, customized bus is different from
conventional bus. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct in-depth
research on customized bus lines and station planning [2].
The operation planning process of customized bus includes
four basic processes: line and station planning, timetable
preparation, driving plan preparation, and shift arrangement
of sales personnel. Among the processes outlined, line and
station planning plays an important role as the first and key
step to ensure a smooth customized bus operation. Reasonable
line and station planning are the basis for a correct follow-up
process [3]. Demand-responsive bus refers to bus operating
modes such as fixed persons, fixed points, fixed times, pricing,
and fixed vehicles through passenger reservations. Because
of the determined operating state, this type of transport
can improve the operating efficiency. Presently, research on
demand-responsive bus mainly focuses on fare formulation,
route planning, the dispatching mode, and other compo-
nents [4]. Aiming at improving the rationality of customized
bus route schemes and solving decentralized and diversified
travel problems, this study determines an optimization method
of customized bus routes and improves the relevant theories
of customized bus operating routes so that customized bus can
effectively complement traditional bus and enrich the service
mode of bus.
Owing to the real-time availability and flexibility of the
customized public system in response to reservation demand,
there is great uncertainty in station and line planning.
An unreasonable station and line planning scheme may
impose high operational costs to meet the demand of a
single trip. Simultaneously, the uncertainty caused by real-time
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
adjustment may increase the waiting time of passengers and
reduce the system reliability. Therefore, the selection of the
customized bus sharing stations, organization of operation
routes, considering and balancing the overall operation and
individual needs of the system, and ensuring the reliability
and punctuality of services are the bottlenecks restricting
the development of customized buses in response to the
reservation needs. Starting from the limitations of the current
customization mode to the system operation characteristics,
this paper discusses the station layout and route planning
theory of customized bus in response to reservation demand,
in detail, to provide a theoretical reference for the construction
and operation of a customized bus system.
The key contributions of this work are as follows:
i) A customized bus line and station planning method
completely based on passenger travel demand is proposed, and
a demand responsive customized bus line planning model is
established.
ii) According to the location distribution of passenger travel
starting points, a joint station planning method based on
hierarchical clustering is proposed.
iii) This study determines the principles of customized
bus lines and station planning from the perspectives of bus
companies, passengers, and society, and an improved ant
colony algorithm is proposed to solve the customized bus line
planning model.
iv) A customized bus line planning scheme is obtained based
on the real road network, verifying the effectiveness of the
planning method and the proposed algorithm.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
presents related work on customized bus. Section III designs
an optimization model of multivehicle customized bus
routes. Our proposed optimization algorithm is discussed in
Section IV. Section V presents a comparison of the perfor-
mances of the proposed algorithm and an analysis of the exper-
imental results. Section VI concludes the study and identifies
the direction of future work.
II. R ELATED W ORK
In recent years, with the rapid development of infor-
mation and communication technology, a new bus service
mode known as fixed buses has been introduced. Because
of its directness, speed, comfort, and economic advantages
among other characteristics, customized bus has attracted
many private car commuters and effectively alleviated the
problems of urban traffic congestion and environmental pollu-
tion. Presently, the research depth and scope of the problems
involved in customized bus are still in the primary stage.
However, with the proposal of urban traffic problem resolu-
tion and the development of diversified traffic modes, more
scholars have started to explore in this research direction.
Nguyen et al. [5] investigated the comparison of dynamical
response of buses used in city transport based on multi-
degrees-of-freedom (DOF) bus models correlated against pas-
senger ride comfort criteria. Kim et al. [6] introduced a school
bus scheduling problem wherein trips for each school are
given. A trip consists of a sequence of bus stops and their
designated school. Each school has its fixed time window
Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
within which trips should be completed. A school bus can
serve multiple trips for multiple schools. The school bus
scheduling problem seeks to optimize bus schedules to serve
all the given trips considering the school time windows. Euchi
and Mraihi et al. [7] combined the ant colony algorithm with
a large neighborhood search algorithm to propose a hybrid
algorithm for bus path planning. Ma et al. [8] proposed a
three-stage hybrid coding method based on NSGA-II algo-
rithm to deal with customized bus route optimization under
uncertain condition. The results are of great value for exploring
customized bus route optimization methods and improving
the efficiency of customized bus operations. Guo et al. [9]
suggested a time-dependent bus route planning methodology
that explicitly considers path flexibility between nodes to be
visited. They established a mixed-integer programming model
to formulate the problem, where decision-making consider-
ations in bus route planning, path choice between nodes,
and passenger assignment are concurrently integrated. He and
Song [10] proposed a micro-evolutionary algorithm to solve
the dynamic positioning problem of customized bus stops,
including the acquisition of customized bus demand, the
construction of customized bus line design model with time
window, the design of algorithm and the solution of model
to obtain customized bus line scheme. For the line network
planning of customized bus, we primarily learn from the line
planning theory of conventional bus. There are three traditional
types of bus line network planning methods that mainly use
the treatment of the evaluated passenger flow for line network
planning. The first type of method solves the problem of
line network planning through a mathematical model, which
is a quantitative method. The second type of method is the
passenger flow analysis method, which completes the layout of
lines through the statistical analysis of the distribution of urban
passenger flow distribution points and main passenger flow
corridors. Typical methods include the travel route method,
geometric vector method, and distribution point distribution
method [11]. The third type of method combines qualita-
tive and quantitative methods. The most common method is
the “point line surface” analysis method [12]. As the first
two methods are highly theoretical and difficult to apply in
practice, the third method is usually used. Cheng [13] used
the point line surface analytic hierarchy process to design a
customized bus line network layout. Tao et al. [14] considered
the minimum passenger travel time and minimum fuel costs
as the objectives to build a model and solved it using a
genetic algorithm. Chen et al. [15] proposed a data-driven
customized bus (CB) line design model based on multi-source
data, that is, a transit smart card, GPS, and mobile sensor
data, to maximize the coverage of demands and minimize
the travel cost of all passengers. A genetic algorithm was
designed to solve the model that can obtain the alternative
CB lines. In addition, Chen et al. [16] also developed a
new type of problem scenario: Multi-Trip Multi-Pickup and
Delivery Problem with Time Windows, to describe CBRDP
by simultaneously optimizing the operating cost and passenger
profit, where excess travel time is introduced to estimate
passenger extra cost compared with taxi service, and each
vehicle is allowed to perform multiple trips for operational cost
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
SHU AND LI: NOVEL DEMAND-RESPONSIVE CB BASED ON IMPROVED ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION AND CLUSTERING ALGORITHMS
savings. The customized bus route design is the most important
part of customized bus operation and development. It involves
determining parking stations and is closely related to early
resource allocation. Therefore, reasonably designing the line to
pick up and send reserved passengers at each combined station
to their destinations is the core issue and the most important
link of customized bus. Focusing on the path optimization
problem not only has practical value for improving customized
bus but also contributes to the in-depth study of the vehicle
routing problem (VRP) theory.
Li et al. [17] considered the optimal pricing problem for
a platform providing these two service modes. Ride-sharing
vehicles can be either driver- or platform-owned. They for-
mulated a competitive game model in which the objective is
to maximize the profits of each mode based on passengers’
transport mode choice, which is strongly affected by utility
functions based on the passengers’ subjective value of time
and the price of the transport mode. Gong et al. [18] proposed
a transfer-based CB network with a modular fleet while simul-
taneously optimizing the passenger-route assignment. To solve
the optimal network structure with this new design paradigm,
they formulate the network design problem into a nonlinear
mixed integer optimization model. A linearization approach
and a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm are pro-
posed to solve the exact and near-optimal solution(s) to the
model, respectively. Cortes and Jayakrishnan [19] presented
the conceptual design and preliminary feasibility simulation
results for a flexible transit system for travel from any point to
any point based on real-time personalized travel desires. While
it is demand-responsive, the concept is significantly different
from older demand-responsive transit systems, which were
often failures. The proposed system requires high coverage,
referring to the availability of a large number of transit
vehicles (often minibuses or vans) that could also operate in
conjunction with private and paratransit systems. To examine
the role of CB services, Wang et al. [20] evaluated the practical
performance, advantages, and spatial and temporal coverage
of a successful CB system based on practical subscription
data for more than two years. The results illustrated that the
CB service is an eclectic choice that can balance the service
quality and cost between traditional bus and private cars/taxis.
Although the travel cost increased to a limited extent, the CB
service significantly improved the travel experience in terms
of the travel time, travel speed, number of stations, and differ-
ence arrival time compared to PT services. Chen et al. [21]
developed an integrated optimization method for CB stop
deployment, route design, and timetable development opti-
mization problems while meeting travel demands as much as
possible to obtain system-optimal CB service plans. Through
the perspective of space-time network, the CB service design
problem (CBSDP) is formulated as an integrated optimization
model with the objectives of maximizing passenger accessibil-
ity and minimizing operating cost. An inconvenience index of
passengers is introduced in the problem to measure the service
quality, and the total number of stops for all involved CB
routes is set as one of the objectives to optimize the total cost
of the CB system. A heuristic approach is applied to generate
efficient solutions for the CBSDP. Wang et al. [22] presented
Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
3
an approach to integrating the disaggregated trip choice model
with the vehicle routing model to determine incentive schemes.
First, the discrete choice model is established to bridge the
passengers’ trip choice probabilities with the influence of
monetary incentives, walking time, and travel time. A vehicle
routing model based on the pickups and deliveries problem
is then adopted to generate the routes and schedules of
vehicles to serve the influenced passengers. Nourbakhsh and
Ouyang [23] analyzed the agency and user cost components
of this proposed system in idealized square cities and seek
the optimum network layout, service area of each bus, and
bus headway, to minimize the total system cost. Alshalalfah
and Shalaby [24] investigated the feasibility and benefits of
replacing feeder fixed-route transit routes in a suburban area
by flex-route service. Schilde et al. [25] proposed a semi-
heuristic algorithm to solve the dynamic problem of small-
scale elements over time by considering the impact of speed
changes in different time forms on the DRT time window
and service level. Lee et al. [26] investigated flexible bus
that provides door-to-door service with multiple passengers
sharing the vehicle, which reduces congestion on the urban
network. The service area is divided into zones, and flexible
buses are assigned to zonal routes based on the historical
demand characteristics before demand realization. Passengers
are served by either regular service or ad hoc service after
the demand realization to minimize the sum of ad hoc service
cost and detour time cost. The elastic and stochastic natures
of demand are captured in the formulation by the volume sto-
chasticity of demand, detour time stochasticity, and elasticity
of demand with respect to the flexible bus service price and
quality. Wu et al. [27] proposed an innovative transit system
with autonomous modular buses (AMBs) that is adaptive to
dynamic traffic demands and not restricted to fixed routes
and timetables. Huang et al. [28] studied a DRT service
that can continuously adjust the path based on passengers’
dynamic demand. The path optimization model is established
with more realistic constraints to create a bus travel plan
within a specified area, and the model not only considers the
preferred time windows of passengers but also maximizes the
benefits of the system. Ma et al. [29] studied the problems
associated with the operation of CBs, such as stop selection,
line planning and timetables, and establishes a model for the
stop planning and timetables of CBs. This study covers the
key issues involving operational systems of CBs, combines
theoretical research and empirical analysis, and provides a
theoretical foundation for the planning and operation of CBs.
Wang et al. [30] aimed to combine mobile phone signaling
data, point of interest (POI) data, and secondary property price
data to propose a method for identifying the service areas
of commuter CB and travel demand. Firstly, mobile phone
signaling data is preprocessed to identify the commuter’s
location of employment and residence. Based on this, the
time-space potential model for commuter CB is proposed.
Secondly, objective factors affecting commuters’ choice to
take commuter CB are used as model input variables. Logistic
regression models are applied to estimate the probability of
the grids being used as commuter CB service areas and the
probability of the existence of potential travel demand in
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
the grids and, further, to dig into the time-space distribution
characteristics of people with potential demand for CB travel
and analyze the distribution of high hotspot service areas.
Chen et al. [31] established a dynamic programming model
based on nonlinear integer programming (NIP) is to study the
problem of boarding and alighting planning at various CB
stops under the influence of COVID-19. The optimal plan
for passengers boarding and deboarding CB buses could be
obtained. Besides, the mathematical model established in this
paper can obtain the minimum value of the total number of
contacts between passengers during travel under different CB
numbers. It is found that the model solution results eventu-
ally form a Pareto frontier. When the number of CB buses
increases, the total number of contacts between passengers
will decrease. Ahmed et al. [32] studied shared car stations
and proposed a decision support tool based on discrete event
simulation to help decision-makers select the best network
growth strategy and reduce the number of vehicles while
improving passenger satisfaction. Dikas et al. [33] discussed
a way to provide personalized travel services for passengers
by offsetting the existing fixed bus routes; they established
a mixed integer programming model, used a marking algo-
rithm to solve the model, compared the solution efficiency
of the marking algorithm with other algorithms, adjusted the
parameters according to different transportation environments,
and analyzed the solution results. Yu et al. [34] divided the
passenger travel costs into out-of-vehicle travel costs and
vehicle waiting costs, established a two-level mixed integer
programming model to optimize railway stations connecting
the bus network, solved it using a tabu search algorithm, and
compared the solution efficiency of different neighborhood
search algorithms.
Summarizing the above research, the current research on
customized bus has the following problems. Regarding the
passenger flow distribution problem, there is a lack of con-
sideration of the bus operating efficiency. Previous research
only considered the general operating costs, and the analysis
of the passenger flow distribution efficiency is insufficient,
resulting in weak applicability of the model. The connection
mode of the passenger flow distribution center is unscientific.
Presently, the dynamic adjustment and connection strategies
of bus lines include departure frequency adjustments and line
adjustments of some stations. However, because of adjustment
limitations, it is difficult to effectively meet the spatial acces-
sibility requirements of the passenger flow distribution points.
There has been a lack of research on demand-responsive bus
scheduling. Previous studies focused on route planning, but
under the condition of passenger flow distribution, tidal vehicle
agglomeration may occur, which has become a significant
constraint on the role of demand responsive bus.
III. O PTIMIZATION M ODEL OF M ULTIVEHICLE
C USTOMIZED B US ROUTES
Through the application of passenger reservations, we can
obtain basic data such as the sharing site locations, the
time windows of site setting, and the original-destination pair
relationships between sites in terms of customized buses. The
Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
priority is using these basic data to plan customized bus routes
and generating customized bus route plans that consider the
interests of both operators and passengers.
A. Analysis of Constructed Model
When constructing the model, it is necessary to consider the
operating characteristics of customized buses. The relationship
between vehicles and origin-destination pairs is the starting
and ending points of the origin-destination pairs, i.e., the
sharing sites where vehicles need to stop. The model in this
study involves a parking lot and vehicle resources, i.e., a
multivehicle parking lot with a variety of models. In this study,
the customized bus service area is set as a rectangle with an
area of. Within the service zone, the loading area L 1 ×W1 with
only multiple loading sites and the departure area L 2 × W2
with only multiple departure sites are determined. Therefore,
a customized bus will serve loading passengers at the L × W
loading area and ferry them to the appropriate departure sites.
After the loading and departure areas within the service
zone of a customized bus are determined, based on the
sharing site locations, station time windows, travel demand,
and original-destination pair relationships between sites in
terms of customized buses, the operating company determines
the dispatched vehicle types and routes to meet all site time
window requirements as much as possible, thus transporting
passengers to their destinations. A certain type of customized
bus issued from the yard picks up passengers at the loading
area, then takes them to the destination station, and returns to
the yard after completing the task. Based on the constraints
of the on-board capacity and travel time and considering the
interests of the operating company and passengers, the optimal
route scheme that optimizes the system costs within the
service zone is solved to realize the sustainable development
of customized buses and meet the diversified and decentralized
travel needs.
B. Modeling Assumption
(1) The roads are in good condition, and no traffic accidents
have occurred to affect road passage;
(2) A customized bus runs at a uniform speed
of v = 30km/ h;
(3) There is no overlap between the loading and unloading
areas;
(4) Passengers wait for boarding at the beginning of the
service time window.
In the customized bus dispatching process, vehicle dis-
patching is considered a two-stage dispatching problem. The
existing variable route-type bus service mode adopts a single
vehicle operating model and a rectangular service zone with
a service zone length of L, as shown in Figure 1.
In Figure 1, C is the control point. Every bus dispatched
by the dispatching center has a fixed departure time at each
control site. If a bus arrives at a site in advance, it must wait
and depart again at the time point that meets the require-
ments of the time window. Customized buses are affected
by many factors during their operations. Before establishing
the dispatching model, it is necessary to make corresponding
assumptions about the operating process.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
SHU AND LI: NOVEL DEMAND-RESPONSIVE CB BASED ON IMPROVED ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION AND CLUSTERING ALGORITHMS
Fig. 1. Service range of customized bus routes.
The demand responsive transit replacement dispatching
method divides the traditional one-step vehicle dispatching
task into two stages, as follows:
Stage 1: Passenger demand response stage. Idle conven-
tional buses are used to respond to passenger demand in
advance. Idle conventional buses are regarded as replacement
vehicles for demand responsive transit (hereinafter referred to
as replacement vehicles).
Stage 2: Supplement vacancy stage. Demand-responsive
transit is used to supplement conventional buses and restore
the balance of the conventional bus system. In this stage,
the demand responsive transit is regarded as supplementary
vehicles (hereinafter referred to as supplementary vehicles) to
replace the vehicles in Stage 1.
The execution time of the two stages above does not follow
a strict order. The departure time of the replacement vehicle in
Stage 1 can be traced back to the booking time of a passenger.
The supplementary vehicles in Stage 2 can return to the con-
ventional bus site after completing the demand response task to
supplement the absence of replacement vehicles. The staged
execution of the dispatching task can improve the demand
response speed of the demand responsive transit as well as
the operating efficiency. Vehicle replacement dispatching is
described as follows.
Co-directional replacement implies that the replacement
vehicle and supplementary vehicle are located at the same
first and last station of the conventional bus route. The
implementation principle of this method is shown in Figure 2.
If the dispatching task is i 1 → j1, then the dispatching path
is [i 1 , m 0 , j1 ], and the specific execution steps are as follows:
Step 1: After receiving the travel task A j1 , determine
whether this method is applicable.
Step 2: If the method is not applicable, terminate the
operation; if the method is applicable, proceed to Step 3.
Step 3: Command the replacement vehicle h of the conven-
tional bus site m 0 to perform task A j1 at target location j1 .
Step 4: Select the demand responsive transit k to complete
task Ai1 and replenish it from the initial position i 1 to site m 0
to complete dispatching.
C. Construction of Route Optimization Model of
Demand-Responsive Customized Buses
In the route planning of customized buses, the operating
distance costs, operating time costs, and carbon emission
costs are considered. Customized buses are operated to meet
Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
5
passenger demands. Passengers book customized bus travel
because of the high-quality travel service, and these two fac-
tors depend on each other. Therefore, in customized bus route
planning, it is necessary to focus on and balance the interests
of both passengers and operating companies to obtain a more
reasonable route planning scheme and minimize operating
costs; thus, the loss of interest of passengers in the travel
process, such as reducing the waiting time of the passengers,
can be reduced. Additionally, customized bus routes are flex-
ibly planned according to the demand of customers, and the
vehicles boarded by the passengers at the loading site must
send these passengers to their destinations.
Table I lists the mathematical symbols and notations used
in this paper.
⎧
⎪
⎨ 1, the No.k customized bus model r travels
δi j k =
r
from the site i and the site j (1)
⎪
⎩
0, others
⎧
⎪
⎨ 1, the designated load O D pair qi j of the No.k
yirj k = customized bus model r (2)
⎪
⎩
0, others
⎧
⎪
⎨ 1, the stop service of the No.k customized bus
x ik =
r
model r at the site i (3)
⎪
⎩
0, others
With regard to formulas (1), (2), and (3), this study con-
siders the interests of operating companies and passengers;
therefore, in the overall operations of customized buses, the
interests of operating companies and passengers will be dam-
aged when customized buses arrive at the sharing site earlier
or later than the time window [35], [36].
1) Regarding the Time Window Involved in the Objective
Function: A time window is introduced into the objective
function of the model in this study to determine whether the
operating company or passengers have any lost profits in the
travel process through the time window. There are two types
of time windows: hard time windows and soft time windows.
1) Hard time window. Passengers are highly time-sensitive
and can only accept bus services within the time window. Once
the service time is not within the time window, passengers will
no longer accept bus service.
2) Soft time window. Passengers are not sensitive to time
and are willing to accept services outside the time window.
Appropriate compensation should be provided to passengers
to compensate for the loss at this time.
In this model, the temporary cancellation of passengers’
bookings is not considered, and passengers accept the riding
service after the operating company accepts the passengers’
applications; therefore, the objective function in the model
adopts a soft time window.
2) From the Perspective of the Interests of the Operat-
ing Company: The operating company should invest some
operating costs to maintain the normal operations of vehicles
when the customized bus service commences. Therefore, the
operating company is expected to provide the highest service
level for reserved passengers to attract more passengers with
limited operating costs. The operating costs considered in the
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.

6 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

Fig. 2. Demand responsive transit co-directional vehicle replacement dispatching diagram.

model include the running costs of vehicles, time penalty costs, The uncertainty of the vehicle arrival times at stations
vehicle departure costs, and idle costs of vehicles that have not because customized buses arrive at the sites early or late results
exited the yard. in the operating company not obtaining the expected social
a) Running costs of vehicles: Running a vehicle con- benefits after paying the input costs. In the case of roads in
sumes energy, and a vehicle needs time to serve the passengers good condition, such uncertain arrival times are mainly due
at each service site. Therefore, the costs incurred by the to unreasonable departure schedules or vehicle routes by the
operating company are defined as the running costs, including operating company; therefore, there needs to be a time cost
the costs of a vehicle running between two sites and the time penalty for early or late arrivals, and the expression is as
costs of a vehicle serving passengers (i.e., passengers getting follows:

on and off the bus). The running costs are expressed as follows:    
⎡ Z4 = μ1 max E Ti − ATikr , 0
   di j r∈R k∈K r i∈B S
Z 3 = fr × ⎣ δirj k 
v   
r∈R k∈K r i∈U j ∈U + μ2 max ATikr − LTi , 0 (5)
⎛ ⎞⎤
i∈R S
 
+2Ta ⎝ x ik
r
yirj k qi j ⎠⎦ (4) c) Departure costs and idle costs of vehicles: Every
i∈B S + j ∈B S − vehicle that leaves a depot should be equipped with a
b) Time penalty cost of vehicle: The time window penalty driver, and the operating company should pay a salary
cost is the penalty that should be accepted when the distrib- that is expressed as the departure cost for the driver to
ution vehicle exceeds the time window, which is reflected by ensure the normal departures of vehicles. When the sup-
the penalty cost. The time window is also called the hard ply of vehicles is not greater than the demand, the vehicle
and soft time window. The hard time window implies that the resources will be fully utilized. However, when the supply
distribution vehicle must deliver the distribution goods to the is greater than the demand, the vehicles not departing from
customers within the specified time period, and the customers a depot need funds for timely repair and maintenance that
refuse to accept the services provided outside this time period. are represented by the idle costs of vehicles. Therefore,
This window does not allow vehicles to arrive outside the the departure and idle costs of vehicles are expressed as
follows:
time window. The soft time window allows vehicles to arrive ⎡ ⎛ ⎞⎤
outside the time window but this requires a certain penalty     
(penalty cost) based on the length of time away from the time Z5 = ⎣θr δ0r j k + ω2 ⎝ K r − δ0r j k ⎠⎦
window. Evidently, there is no penalty when arriving within r∈R k∈K r j ∈B S k∈K r j ∈B S
the time window. (6)

Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.

SHU AND LI: NOVEL DEMAND-RESPONSIVE CB BASED ON IMPROVED ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION AND CLUSTERING ALGORITHMS 7

TABLE I
M ATHEMATICAL S YMBOLS AND N OTATIONS U SED IN THE PAPER

3) From the Perspective of the Interests of Passengers: the time costs generated by the late arrival of vehicles at the
a) Early arrival at service sites by vehicles: Customized loading site that causes passengers on a bus to wait is shown
buses depart from the depot according to departure schedules as follows:
and serve passengers at various loading sites. When a vehicle 
arrives at the site earlier than the service time window, the Z 7 = ω1
vehicle should stop to wait for passengers to arrive and get on r∈R k∈K
⎧ ⎡
r
⎤⎫
the bus because passengers do not arrive at a site before the ⎨     ⎬
service time starts. The passengers that get on the bus before × ⎣x ik
r
yirj k qi j max ATikr − LTi , 0 ⎦
⎩ + −
⎭
such a site should wait for the passengers to get on along with i∈B S j ∈B S
the vehicle. Therefore, the time cost generated by the early (8)
arrival of vehicles at the loading site that causes passengers
on a bus to wait is expressed as follows: Therefore, according to the above analysis, the interests of
⎡ ⎤ passengers are shown in (9), shown at the bottom of the next
   
⎣ page, whereas the interests of operating companies are in (10),
Z 6 = ω1 L rj k max E T j − AT jrk , 0 ⎦ (7)
shown at the bottom of the next page.
r∈R k∈K r j ∈B S +

b) Late arrival at service sites by vehicles: Passengers
at the loading site reach the station at the beginning of the
service time; however, if a vehicle arrives at a site later than
the service time window, the passengers at this site should
wait for the vehicle to arrive to get on the bus. Therefore,
IV. M ODEL S OLUTION AND S TRUCTURE A NALYSIS
A. Search Strategy of the Algorithm
The solution of the model in this study consists of the
following parts: the number of planned routes, the number

Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.

8 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

of passengers at the bus sites of each route, the paths of each
route, and the vehicle models in each route.
1) How the passenger loading sites are situated. The far-
thest loading site from the destination is set as the
beginning of the search. When passengers at this site
can obtain all services, the starting site is postponed,
and the second farthest loading site from the destination
is set as the beginning of the search.
2) Tabu table. T abu is the symbol for the tabu table used to
satisfy the mileage and passenger capacity constraints.
The total loading site set of passengers is denoted by T S.
It is assumed that the current path of an ant colony is Pi , the
current service loading site is represented by S j , and the set
of demand sites for which passenger needs are fully satisfied
is represented by DS. The set of demand points for which
passenger needs have not been fully met is represented by N S:
DS + N S = T S
The tabu table is T abu. For any loading site Sk , Sk ∈ N S
if:
   
l S j , Sk + l (Sk , D) > ω · l S j , D
Then, S j is added to T abu. The path length exceeds the
length constraint and cannot meet the time window constraint.
If the loading site S j meets the length constraint
  and the
current remaining demand of S j not served is q S j , then
 
q Pi + q S j ≤ cTi (13)
In which, q Pi represents the total demand currently served
by Pi . If the demand for the loading site S j served by Pi is
less than the remaining capacity, the maximum customized bus
model will be adopted, that is, the demand served by Pi is:
    
q Pi S j = min cTi − q Pi , q S j (14)
If node S j is selected as the next service point, its remaining
unserved demand is:
       
q̄ S j = max q S j − q Pi S j , 0 (15)
 
If q̄ S j = 0, node S j is placed in node set DS. The total
service demand of Pi is updated to:
 
q̄ Pi = q Pi + q Pi S j (16)
The path model is then changed to the most suitable model.
Namely,
q̄ Pi
max r Pi = , cTi ≥ q̄ Pi (17)
cTi
The colony search continues until N S = , and the iteration
ends.
The condition for the end of the algorithm iteration is
N S = . The specific steps of the algorithm are as follows:
Step 1: Initialize the ant colony parameter and amount of
global information. Set the total number of ants in the colony
as G and total number of algorithm iterations as N, and the
current iteration number is iter = 1.
Step 2: The current ant colony serial number ag = 1.
Step 3: In the ant colony ag, the number of ants is as = 1.
The ant colony is placed at the farthest service site.
Step 4: For the ant colony ag, search all demand sites and
(11) update the ant colony tabu table, Tabuag.
Step 5: Combined with tabu table, Tabuag , select the next
demand service site Sk according to the pheromone concen-
tration among nodes, and update the demand site and path.
(12) Step 6: If the remaining demand capacity of the service site
Sk is 0, add Sk to node set DS, and delete it from node set NS.
Step 7: If NS is not vacant but the tabu table Tabuag of ant
colony ag is vacant, the number of this ant colony is asag=
asag+1 and return to Step 4.
Step 8: If NS is vacant, the iteration of the ant colony, ag,
ends. Record the solution of this ant colony to calculate the
model objective function ag = ag + 1.
Step 9: If ag ≤ G return to Step 3. Alternatively, update the
algorithm optimal solution and global pheromone.
Step 10: If iter ≤ N, return to Step 2 or output the optimal
solution.
B. Clustering Analysis of Customized Bus Sites
The long-distance cart sites in the service zone should be
identified prior to route planning. Presently, following many
studies on site division, this study uses the improved K-means
clustering algorithm to determine the sites. The K-means
clustering algorithm divides the site scope according to the
degree of similarity of the distance. The basic idea of the

Z2 = Z6 + Z7 ⎧   ⎫

⎪
⎪ L rj k max E T j − AT jrk , 0 ⎪
⎪
⎪
⎨ ⎪
⎬
 j ∈B S

+

= ω1   r  r  ⎪ (9)
⎪
⎪
⎩+
r∈R k∈K r ⎪
r
x ik yi j k qi j max ATik − LTi , 0 ⎪ ⎪
⎭
+ −
i∈B S j ∈B S
Z1 = Z3 + Z4 + Z5   
⎡ ⎤
  d  
⎢ fr + 2Taδirj k vi j r
x ik ⎥ yirj k qi j
= ⎢ i∈B S +  j ∈B S − ⎥
⎣  i∈U j ∈U     ⎦
r∈R k∈K r +μ 1 max E Ti − AT r ,0 + μ
ik 2 max AT r − LT , 0
ik i
i∈B S i∈B S
⎡ ⎛ ⎞⎤
    
+ ⎣θr δ0r j k + ω2 ⎝ K r − δ0r j k ⎠⎦ (10)
r∈R k∈K r j ∈B S k∈K r j ∈B S

Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.

SHU AND LI: NOVEL DEMAND-RESPONSIVE CB BASED ON IMPROVED ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION AND CLUSTERING ALGORITHMS 9

algorithm is as follows: given the samples of the dataset and

data values to be clustered, the center of the cluster is divided
by random sampling, and the distance between the center point
of the cluster and undivided sample data is calculated using
the similarity measure function in an iterative way. The data
are then grouped into the cluster where the nearest cluster
center is located. After the distribution, the average distance
of the dataset of each cluster is calculated, and the clustering
is conducted again by moving the cluster center until the
sum of squares of errors within the cluster is the minimum
and no longer changes with the iterations. The advantage of
this clustering algorithm is that the long-distance cart sites
can be located in the most crowded positions of passengers,
and the distance system between passengers and stations is
optimal, which is convenient for passengers to arrive at the
stations.
Because the locations of the booking passengers will be
randomly scattered throughout the service area, there will
be some demand passengers with no other demand points
in these booking demand data. That is, a small number of
booking demand points will be far away from the concentrated Fig. 3. K-means clustering algorithm flowchart.
demand areas. If this part of the passengers is considered in the
calculation, it will have a certain impact on the results obtained
Step 3: According to the distribution of the demand points,
by the K-means algorithm. Therefore, in the cluster analysis of
K points are selected as the initial center point Ck (k =
most sites, such distant passenger sites in the booking demand
1, 2, 3, . . . , n) using past experience.
data are first removed.
Step 4: Calculate the distance value of other passenger
In this study, the method of removing distant isolated
points and Ck :
passenger sites is as follows: 
(1) Determine the neighborhood radius r and the number    2  2
of nearest sites. Count within the neighborhood according to Di Ai , C j = x i −x cj + yi − y cj j = {1, 2, . . . , k}
the required precision value. (18)
(2) Calculate the number of other booking request points
in the neighborhood of all booking demand points in the Cluster each passenger point with the nearest clustering
booking request data and ensure that they are in the center point:
 
array. Di (Ai , Ck ) = min Di Ai , C j (19)
(3) Analyze all booking demand points in the array and
store the request points with values less than the count in O. Step 5: After the clustering all the sites, calculate the mean
(4) All booking demand points in O are the locations of value of the passenger coordinates of each newly completed
distant isolated passengers. clustering area as the new clustering center Ck .
This method is adopted to filter “isolated points” in the Step 6: Calculate the sum of square of errors:
  
requirement data, making the final calculated site results more SS E = Di Ai , C j (20)
reasonable.
K should be assigned before the cluster analysis. Before Step 7: Calculate the SS E through multiple iterations. When
long-distance site clustering, the number of station points in the variation range of SS E is less than the accuracy, the
the service area should be determined according to certain iteration ends.
principles. In this study, the determined K is mainly calibrated
according to the service scope of the site to meet the service V. S IMULATION E XPERIMENT AND A NALYSIS
demand of the entire region. The related research on customized buses has not been
The K-means clustering algorithm flow is shown in used for testing standard datasets. This study designs a certain
Figure 3. number of cases based on the reality of the “separation of
In the K-means algorithm, each passenger data point Ai workplace and residence” to verify the validity of the model
represents a docking site, including x i coordinates and yi and algorithm and chooses Wuhan, China as the study area. All
coordinates; the cluster center C j represents the site after lines involve four areas (Jiang’an District, Qingshan District,
clustering. The coordinate data are x cj and y cj . Hongshan District, and Jiangxia District). The loading sites are
Step 1: Analyze the passenger data and determine the located in Jiang’an District, Qingshan District, and Hongshan
passenger coordinates according to the travel time and other District (the purple box area in the figure). The unloading
passenger characteristics. sites are in Jiangxia District (the red box area in the figure),
Step 2: Establish passenger data set A. as shown in Figure 4.

Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
10
Fig. 4. Research areas.
Fig. 5. Distribution map of passengers’ starting points.
Fig. 6. Distribution map of passengers’ ending points.
In this study, the collected specific addresses are first
analyzed using the longitude and latitude analysis of a large
number of addresses and conversion tools to obtain the cor-
responding longitude and latitude coordinates of each travel
demand. The coordinates are then converted into planar coor-
dinates using coordinate conversion software to calculate the
Euclidean distances between passenger travel demand points.
Finally, based on the obtained plane coordinates, the starting
and ending points of each passenger are marked in the figure
so that the distribution of the passenger travel demand can
be observed intuitively. Figure 5 shows the distribution of
passenger travel starting points, whereas Figure 6 shows the
distribution of passenger travel ending points.
According to the data processing results, the improved
k-means clustering method proposed in this study is used
Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
Fig. 7. K-means clustering map of passengers’ starting points.
Fig. 8. K-means clustering map of passengers’ ending points.
to divide the passenger travel demand into traffic areas, and
the travel demand with similar distances is divided into a
traffic area. In this study, combined with the experience of the
traffic community division of conventional bus, the coverage
radius of the customized bus community is 2.5 km. Based on
the maximum distance measurement criterion, the maximum
interclass distance is 5 km. The corresponding clustering
center point is obtained through hierarchical clustering of the
passenger travel starting points and travel end points.
The obtained clustering center point is then used as the
initial clustering center point in the K-means clustering algo-
rithm, and K-means clustering is conducted for the passenger
travel start and end points. Figure 7 shows the K-means clus-
tering results of the passenger travel starting points, whereas
Figure 8 shows the K-means clustering results of the passenger
travel ending points.
This study determines the customized bus stops based on
the actual situation. Table II lists the loading area stops of
a customized bus. The table contains four parts: the first
column is the serial numbers, the second is the loading sites,
the third is the longitude and latitude coordinates of the
stations, and the fourth is the number of passengers loading
at the sites. The second loading site column includes the
three regions of Hongshan District (Wuhan Railway Station,
Hexie Road-Baiyun Road, Hexie Road-Yang Chunhu Road,
Yang Chunhu Road-Yang Chunhu Subway Station, Yang
Chunhu Road-ChangshanTsui, and Yang Chunhu Road-Youyi
Avenue), Qingshan District (Jianshe No. Ten Road-Qingxin
Residence, Jianshe No. Ten Road-Yejin Avenue, Jianshe No.
Ten Road-Daijia Lane, and Jianshe No. Ten Road-Heping
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
SHU AND LI: NOVEL DEMAND-RESPONSIVE CB BASED ON IMPROVED ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION AND CLUSTERING ALGORITHMS
TABLE II
L OADING A REA S TOPS OF C USTOMIZED B US
Road), and Jiang’an District (Hanshi Highway-Xinhe Bridge,
Hanshi Highway-Fazhan Road, Hanshi Highway-Lishan Road,
Hanshi Highway-Wuhu Main Street, Hanshi Highway-Binhu
Bridge, and Hanshi Highway-Zhangwan).
Table III lists the unloading area stops of the customized
bus. The table contains four parts: the first column is the
serial numbers, the second is the unloading sites, the third
is the longitude and latitude coordinates of the stations, and
the fourth is the number of passengers unloading at the
sites. The second unloading site column includes Jiangxia
District (Wuhan Minzu Avenue-Guzhuang Village, Guanshan
Avenue-Dapeng Village, Guanshan Avenue-Shuguang Vil-
lage, Guanshan Avenue-Vocational Technical School, Guan-
shan Avenue-Sun City, Guanshan Avenue-Hudian Community,
Gaoxin Avenue-BRT Guanshan Avenue, Gaoxin Avenue-BRT
Guangu Avenue, Gaoxin Avenue-Chapeng, Chapeng Village,
GuangguTongji Hospital, Guanggu No. 4 Road, Guanggu
Public Service Center, China 15th Metallurgical Construction
Group Co., Ltd, and High-tech Park).
Figure 9 shows the loading site distribution of the cus-
tomized bus. The figure includes the following 16 sites and
involves three districts: Wuhan Railway Station, Hexie Road-
Baiyun Road, Hexie Road-Yang Chunhu Road, Yang Chunhu
Road-Yang ChunhuSubway Station, Yang Chunhu Road-
ChangshanTsui, Yang Chunhu Road-Youyi Avenue, Jianshe
Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
11
TABLE III
U NLOADING A REA S TOPS OF C USTOMIZED B US
Fig. 9. Loading site distribution of customized bus.
No. Ten Road-Qingxin Residence, Jianshe No. Ten Road-Yejin
Avenue, Jianshe No. Ten Road-Daijia Lane, Jianshe No. Ten
Road-Heping Avenue, Hanshi Highway-Xinhe Bridge, Hanshi
Highway-Fazhan Road, Hanshi Highway-Lishan Road, Hanshi
Highway-Wuhu Main Street, Hanshi Highway-Binhu Bridge,
and Hanshi Highway-Zhangwan.
Figure 10 shows the unloading site distribution of the
customized bus. It includes 15 stops and involves one
district: Wuhan Minzu Avenue-Guzhuang Village, Guanshan
Avenue-Dapeng Village, Guanshan Avenue-Shuguang Vil-
lage, Guanshan Avenue-Vocational Technical School, Guan-
shan Avenue-Sun City, Guanshan Avenue-Hudian Community,
Gaoxin Avenue-BRT Guanshan Avenue, Gaoxin Avenue-BRT
Guangu Avenue, Gaoxin Avenue-Chapeng, Chapeng Village,
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.

12 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

TABLE V
C USTOMIZED B US L INE 1 O PERATING I NFORMATION TABLE

Fig. 10. Unloading site distribution of customized bus.

TABLE IV
C USTOMIZED B US L INE P LANNING R ESULTS

TABLE VI
Guanggu Tongji Hospital, Guanggu No. 4 Road, Guanggu C USTOMIZED B US L INE 2 O PERATING I NFORMATION TABLE
Public Service Center, China 15th Metallurgical Construction
Group Co., Ltd, and High-tech Park.
The operating results are sorted to obtain the customized
bus operating plan and operations of each line, as presented in
Tables IV to VII (↑ indicates the loading sites and ↓ indicates
the unloading sites from Tables V to VII). Table IV presents
the result of customized bus route planning and includes five
parts: the first column is the lines, the second is the specific
routes, the third is the number of passengers, the fourth is the
attendance rates, and the fifth is the running mileages.
Table V is the operating information table of customized
bus Line 1, which includes four parts: the first column
is the serial numbers of the sites, the second is the site
names, the third is the longitude and latitude coordinates of
the sites, and the fourth is the original-destination pairs of
vehicle services. The loading sites include Wuhan Railway
Station, Hexie Road-Baiyun Road, Hexie Road-Yang Chunhu
Road, Yang Chunhu Road-Yang Chunhu Subway Station,
and Yang Chunhu Road-Changshan Tsui; the unloading sites
include Wuhan MinzuAvenue-Guzhuang Village, Guanshan
Avenue-Dapeng Village, Guanshan Avenue-Shuguang Village,
Guanshan Avenue-Vocational Technical School and Guanshan
Avenue-Sun City. Finally, the running mileage of the Line 1 is of the sites, and the fourth is the original-destination pairs
25.6 km. The OD pair refers to the starting and ending point of vehicle services. The loading sites include Jianshe No.
of traffic, and the OD traffic volume refers to the traffic travel Ten Road-Qingxin Residence, Jianshe No. Ten Road-Yejin
volume between the starting point and end point. “O” - Origin, Avenue, Jianshe No. Ten Road-Daijia Lane, Jianshe No.
indicating the starting point of the line, “D” - Destination, Ten Road-Heping Avenue, and Yang Chunhu Road-Youyi
indicating the destination of the line. Avenue. The unloading sites include Guanshan Avenue-
Table VI is the operating information table of customized Hudian Community, Gaoxin Avenue-BRT Guanshan Avenue,
bus Line 2, which includes four parts: the first column Gaoxin Avenue-BRT Guangu Avenue, Gaoxin Avenue-
is the serial numbers of the sites, the second is the site Chapeng, and Chapeng Village. The running mileage of
names, the third is the longitude and latitude coordinates Line 2 is 22.3 km.

Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
SHU AND LI: NOVEL DEMAND-RESPONSIVE CB BASED ON IMPROVED ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION AND CLUSTERING ALGORITHMS
TABLE VII
C USTOMIZED B US L INE 3 O PERATING I NFORMATION TABLE
Table VII is the operating information table of customized
bus Line 3, which includes four parts: the first column is the
serial numbers of the sites, the second is the site names, the
third is the longitude and latitude coordinates of the sites,
and the fourth is the original-destination pairs of the vehicle
services. The loading sites include Hanshi Highway-Xinhe
Bridge, Hanshi Highway-Fazhan Road, Hanshi Highway-
Lishan Road, Hanshi Highway-Wuhu Main Street, Hanshi
Highway-Binhu Bridge, and Hanshi Highway-Zhangwan. The
unloading sites include Guanggu Tongji Hospital, Guanggu
No. 4 Road, Guanggu Public Service Center, China 15th
Metallurgical Construction Group Co., Ltd. and High-tech
Park. The running mileage of the Line 3 is 34.5 km.
Some studies use the Euclidean distance to calculate the
distance data between the vehicle sites. The Euclidean distance
represents the straight-line distance between two points, which
is relatively simple to obtain but quite different from the real
running distance in a real road network. To ensure the accuracy
of the experiment, the actual running distance between any two
selected sites is calculated in batches.
In the above customized bus route 1, nine communities are
randomly selected: No. 1 High School Attached to China Nor-
mal University, Minghu Haoting, Jinxiu Longcheng, Wuhan
Future Science and Technology City, Optics Valley Standard
City, Poly Times Community, Hukou Community, Joy City,
and Zhongjianke Industrial Park. Figure 11 shows the original-
destination relation diagram, Figure 12 shows the traffic flow
diagram, and Figure 13 shows the original-destination relation
and traffic flow diagram.
Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
13
Fig. 11. Original-destination relation diagram.
Fig. 12. Traffic flow diagram.
Fig. 13. Original-destination relation and traffic flow diagram.
The original-destination relations are represented by the
green line segments in the figure, which represent the num-
ber of people moving between communities every day. The
number of people is the number next to the line segment.
The traffic flow is represented by blue–gray lines around the
driving routes in the figure. The blue–gray numbers next to
the section indicate the number of people who pass through
the section using this type of bus every day.
Communities randomly selected in the above customized
bus Line 2 are Wuhan Railway Station, Yangluo Passen-
ger Station, BeiyangQiaoxinyuan-South District, Yejin Street,
Wuhan No. 2 Light Industrial School, Hongyi Industrial Park,
HanlinYaju, Qiaotou Village, Pingjiang No.1 and Chaibo No.1
Village. Their OD relations and traffic flows are shown in
Figure 14.
As shown in Figure 14, the attendance of Line 1 is 89.47%
and that of Line 2 and Line 3 is 100%, indicating a good
use of the carrying capacity of buses. The attendance of
Line 1 can be explained by the principles of the model and
algorithm in this paper. Namely, in the original-destination pair
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
14
Fig. 14. Original-destination relation and traffic flow diagram.
Fig. 15. Distance diagram between passengers and sites.
allocation process, other vehicles are selected to be allocated
until all other allocated vehicles realize the maximum vehicle
capacity. In this situation, vehicles allocated with the original-
destination pairs may not achieve the maximum capacity.
As observed from the line stops, there are more loading sites
than unloading sites, with each site serving between 1 and
23 people for a single line. In terms of the running mileage,
the distance between the working area and residential area is
more than 22 km. For bus, this distance belongs to medium-
and long-distance transportation.
The improved K-means algorithm not only determines the
clustering centers but also completes the allocation of cluster-
ing centers by passengers. Therefore, after the above steps, the
corresponding loading and unloading sites of each passenger
are determined. In the actual operations of customized buses,
the distance between sites and passengers will significantly
increase the travel costs of passengers, resulting in passen-
gers choosing other ways of travel. Therefore, to test the
clustering effect, the distance between passengers and their
corresponding sites is summarized and processed visually,
as shown in Figure 15.
It is evident from Figure 15 that the distances between the
residential areas and stopping sites are mostly within 1,500 m,
with an average distance of 656.3 m. The distance between
the working area and stopping site is below 1,500 m, with an
average distance of 762.8 m. The critical threshold value for
evaluating the layout of bus stops is 800 m, and the average
distance between the two areas is less than this value, which
Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
indicates that the proposed site selection method in this paper
is feasible.
From the above experimental results, it can be observed that
the proposed algorithm not only determines the stopping sites
and running sequence of each line but also completely outputs
the original-destination pair of customized bus services at each
site, which completes the allocation of passengers to vehicles
and satisfies passengers’ travel needs. The route planning
method in this study determines the vehicle and running route
for each passenger, which proves that the proposed method can
effectively solve the problem of the corresponding relationship
between passenger starting points in customized bus route
planning.
VI. C ONCLUSION AND F UTURE W ORK
According to the characteristics of customized bus pas-
senger travel demand, this study divided the customized bus
traffic community using the improved K-means clustering
method, proposed the joint stop planning method for the
demand response of customized buses, and established a
customized bus line planning model from the perspectives
of bus companies, passengers, and society. An improved ant
colony algorithm was constructed to solve the model. Finally,
the proposed planning method and designed solution algo-
rithm were verified by simulation experiments. The research
results of this study not only provide technical support for
the planning and operation of bus companies but also have
practical significance in improving passenger travel comfort
and alleviating urban traffic congestion and air pollution. In the
future, we will conduct research on customized bus responding
to static and dynamic needs simultaneously to promote new
breakthroughs in the field of bus services.
R EFERENCES
[1] Q. Sun, S. Chien, D. Hu, G. Chen, and R.-S. Jiang, “Optimizing multi-
terminal customized bus service with mixed fleet,” IEEE Access, vol. 8,
pp. 156456–156469, 2020.
[2] X. Dou, Q. Meng, and K. Liu, “Customized bus service design for
uncertain commuting travel demand,” Transportmetrica A, Transp. Sci.,
vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 1405–1430, Dec. 2021.
[3] S. Han, H. Fu, J. Zhao, J. Lin, and W. Zeng, “Modelling and simulation
of hierarchical scheduling of real-time responsive customised bus,” IET
Intell. Transp. Syst., vol. 14, no. 12, pp. 1615–1625, Dec. 2020.
[4] D. Huang, Y. Gu, S. Wang, Z. Liu, and W. Zhang, “A two-phase
optimization model for the demand-responsive customized bus network
design,” Transp. Res. C, Emerg. Technol., vol. 111, pp. 1–21, Feb. 2020.
[5] T. Nguyen, P. Swolana, B. Lechner, and Y. D. Wong, “An experimental
comparison of mathematical heavy-duty city bus models to evaluate
passenger ride comfort induced by road roughness,” Math. Comput.
Model. Dyn. Syst., vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 203–221, Jan. 2021.
[6] B.-I. Kim, S. Kim, and J. Park, “A school bus scheduling problem,” Eur.
J. Oper. Res., vol. 218, no. 2, pp. 577–585, 2012.
[7] J. Euchi and R. Mraihi, “The urban bus routing problem in the Tunisian
case by the hybrid artificial ant colony algorithm,” Swarm Evol. Comput.,
vol. 2, pp. 15–24, Feb. 2012.
[8] C. Ma, C. Wang, and X. Xu, “A multi-objective robust optimization
model for customized bus routes,” IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst.,
vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 2359–2370, Apr. 2021.
[9] R. Guo, W. Zhang, W. Guan, and B. Ran, “Time-dependent urban
customized bus routing with path flexibility,” IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp.
Syst., vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 2381–2390, Apr. 2021.
[10] S. He and R. Song, “Micro-evolution algorithms for solving the
dynamic location problem of customized bus stops,” Theory, Methodol.,
Tools Appl. Model. Simul. Complex Syst., vol. 643, pp. 633–642,
Sep. 2016.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
SHU AND LI: NOVEL DEMAND-RESPONSIVE CB BASED ON IMPROVED ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION AND CLUSTERING ALGORITHMS
[11] L. Tong et al., “Customized bus service design for jointly optimizing
passenger-to-vehicle assignment and vehicle routing,” Transp. Res. C,
Emerg. Technol., vol. 85, pp. 451–475, Dec. 2017.
[12] Y. Jing, H. Hu, S. Guo, X. Wang, and F. Chen, “Short-term prediction
of urban rail transit passenger flow in external passenger transport hub
based on LSTM-LGB-DRS,” IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst., vol. 22,
no. 7, pp. 4611–4621, Jul. 2021.
[13] L. Cheng, “Customization of bus network layout based on point line
surface analytic hierarchy process,” J. Dalian Jiaotong Univ., vol. 35,
no. 3, pp. 23–26, 2014.
[14] L. Tao, C. Ma, and C. Zhu, “Multi objective optimization of customized
bus routes based on genetic algorithm,” J. Lanzhou Jiaotong Univ.,
vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 31–37, 2018.
[15] X. Chen, Y. Wang, and X. Ma, “Customized bus line design model based
on multi-source data,” in Proc. Int. Conf. Transp. Develop., Jul. 2018,
pp. 218–228.
[16] X. Chen, Y. Wang, X. Qu, and X. Ma, “Customized bus route
design with pickup and delivery and time windows: Model, case study
and comparative analysis,” Expert Syst. Appl., vol. 168, pp. 186–198,
Apr. 2021.
[17] Y. Li, X. Li, and S. Zhang, “Optimal pricing of customized bus services
and ride-sharing based on a competitive game model,” Omega-Int.
J. Manage. Sci., vol. 103, pp. 98–112, Sep. 2021.
[18] M. Gong, Y. Hu, Z. Chen, and X. Li, “Transfer-based customized mod-
ular bus system design with passenger-route assignment optimization,”
Transp. Res. E-Logistics Transp. Rev., vol. 153, pp. 562–578, Sep. 2021.
[19] C. E. Cortés and R. Jayakrishnan, “Design and operational concepts
of high-coverage point-to-point transit system,” Transp. Res. Rec.,
J. Transp. Res. Board, vol. 1783, no. 1, pp. 178–187, Jan. 2002.
[20] J. Wang, T. Yamamoto, and K. Liu, “Role of customized bus services
in the transportation system: Insight from actual performance,” J. Adv.
Transp., vol. 2019, pp. 591–605, Aug. 2019.
[21] X. Chen, Y. Wang, and X. Ma, “Integrated optimization for commuting
customized bus stop planning, routing design, and timetable develop-
ment with passenger spatial-temporal accessibility,” IEEE Trans. Intell.
Transp. Syst., vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 2060–2075, Apr. 2021.
[22] L. Wang, L. Zeng, W. Ma, and Y. Guo, “Integrating passenger incentives
to optimize routing for demand-responsive customized bus systems,”
IEEE Access, vol. 9, pp. 21507–21521, 2021.
[23] S. M. Nourbakhsh and Y. Ouyang, “A structured flexible transit system
for low demand areas,” Transp. Res. B, Methodol., vol. 46, no. 1,
pp. 204–216, Jan. 2012.
[24] B. Alshalalfah and A. Shalaby, “Feasibility of flex-route as a
feeder transit service to rail stations in the suburbs: Case study in
Toronto,” J. Urban Planning Develop., vol. 138, no. 1, pp. 90–100,
Mar. 2012.
[25] M. Schilde, K. F. Doerner, and R. F. Hartl, “Integrating stochastic
time-dependent travel speed in solution methods for the dynamic
dial-a-ride problem,” Eur. J. Oper. Res., vol. 238, no. 1, pp. 18–30,
Oct. 2014.
[26] E. Lee, X. Cen, and H. K. Lo, “Zonal-based flexible bus service
under elastic stochastic demand,” Transp. Res. E-Logistics Transp. Rev.,
vol. 152, pp. 432–448, Aug. 2021.
[27] J. Wu, B. Kulcsár, and X. Qu, “A modular, adaptive, and autonomous
transit system (MAATS): An in-motion transfer strategy and perfor-
mance evaluation in urban grid transit networks,” Transp. Res. A, Policy
Pract., vol. 151, pp. 81–98, Sep. 2021.
Authorized licensed use limited to: COMSATS INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on December 21,2022 at 05:11:00 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
15
[28] A. Huang, Z. Dou, L. Qi, and L. Wang, “Flexible route optimization for
demand-responsive public transit service,” J. Transp. Eng. A-Systems,
vol. 12, no. 146, pp. 1123–1135, Dec. 2020.
[29] J. Ma et al., “A model for the stop planning and timetables
of customized buses,” Plos One, vol. 1, no. 12, pp. 90–101,
Jan. 2017.
[30] J. Wang and M. Zhang, “Identifying the service areas and travel demand
of the commuter customized bus based on mobile phone signaling data,”
J. Adv. Transp., vol. 2021, pp. 98–107, Oct. 2021.
[31] F. Chen, H. Peng, W. Ding, X. Ma, D. Tang, and Y. Ye, “Customized bus
passenger boarding and deboarding planning optimization model with
the least number of contacts between passengers during COVID-19,”
Phys. A, Stat. Mech. Appl., vol. 582, pp. 1245–1257, Nov. 2021.
[32] A. El Fassi, A. Awasthi, and M. Viviani, “Evaluation of carsharing
network’s growth strategies through discrete event simulation,” Expert
Syst. With Appl., vol. 39, no. 8, pp. 6692–6705, 2012.
[33] G. Dikas and I. Minis, “Scheduled paratransit transport systems,” Transp.
Res. B, Methodol., vol. 2014, pp. 56–69, Sep. 2014.
[34] Y. Yu, R. Machemehl, and C. Xie, “Demand-responsive transit circulator
service network design,” Transp. Res. E, Logistics Transp. Rev., vol. 76,
pp. 160–175, Apr. 2015.
[35] Z. Han, Y. Chen, H. Li, K. Zhang, and J. Sun, “Customized bus network
design based on individual reservation demands,” Sustainability, vol. 11,
no. 19, pp. 1–25, 2019.
[36] A. Ghaffari, M. Mesbah, and A. Khodaii, “Designing a transit priority
network under variable demand,” Int. J. Transp. Res., vol. 12, no. 6,
pp. 1–14, Jun. 2019.
Wanneng Shu received the Ph.D. degree in com-
puter software and theory from Wuhan Univer-
sity, Wuhan, China, in 2013. He is currently an
Associate Professor with the South-Central Univer-
sity for Nationalities, Wuhan. His research interests
include wireless communication, smart city, green
cloud computing, machine learning, and intelligent
computing.
Yan Li received the bachelor’s degree in mathemat-
ics education and the master’s degree in operational
research and cybernetics from Central China Normal
University, Wuhan, China, in 2000 and 2006, respec-
tively, and the Ph.D. degree in system analysis and
integration from the Huazhong University of Science
and Technology, Wuhan, in 2014. She is currently
an Associate Professor with the College of Science,
Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan. She has
published over ten international journal articles. Her
current research interests include neural networks
and stochastic control.