Reliable frequency determination: Incorporating information on service uncertainty when setting dispatching headways

We first formulate the problem while accounting for the consequences of variability in service operations. The resulting optimization problem is then solved by employing a Branch and Bound approach together with Sequential Quadratic Programming in order to find the optimal dispatching headway for each bus line. Experimental results demonstrate (a) the improvement potential of the base case dispatching headways when considering the service reliability; (b) the sensitivity of the determined dispatching headways to changes in different criteria, such as passenger demand and/or bus running costs, and (c) the convergence accuracy of the proposed solution method when compared to heuristic approaches.