Temporal robustness assessment framework for city-scale bus transit networks

Despite the prevalence of bus transit networks in urban public transportation, they are very susceptible to disruptions that can have negative implications, accompanied by severe socioeconomic consequences and service quality consequences. In addition, since bus transit system is comprised of stops, routes, and passengers, any disruptions in the bus network can trigger chain reaction disruption scenarios, leading to cascade failures across the entire network. Unlike the existing literature, the present study evaluates the robustness of bus transit network considering the varied hourly operation. The robustness assessment is evaluated using a weighted network considering losses in bus frequency and passenger flow, both are essential to inform service quality improvement. Some of the key findings include the observed significant variation in the hourly performance of the network compared to the daily performance when a failure occurs. Moreover, the network is more robust during on-peak hours and mid-peak compared to off-peak hours. However, the network is sensitive to losing service frequency compared passenger flow when a failure happens. These insights could be used to inform a robustness-based spatiotemporal design of bus transit networks.