抄録
Recently, the number of bus passengers is decreasing due to the distribution of own cars. This causes the reduction of scheduled bus service, which further decreases the number of passengers. Under such situations, demand bus service gains attention as a possible alternative, and actually, the demand bus system has been employed in several local cities. The demand bus system means the bus service that can change the schedule of bus service such as timetable and route according to the demand of users. In order to make the demand bus system effective, ITS technology can be used to satisfy the requirements of passengers and achieve the appropriate scheduling from the standpoint of bus management. In this paper, an attempt is made to develop a decision support system that can provide a reasonable and practical scheduling plan to optimize the timetable and route. It is noted that the system is intended to minimize the necessary cost and the traveling and waiting time of users. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the applicability of the system proposed here.
