Simulation and Analysis of Line 1 of Mexico City’s Metrobus: Evaluating System Performance through Passenger Satisfaction

Abstract

The Mexico City Metrobus is one of the most popular forms of public transportation inside the city, and since its opening in 2005, it has become a vital piece of infrastructure for the city; this is why the optimal functioning of the system is of key importance to Mexico City, as it plays a crucial role in moving millions of passengers every day. This paper presents a model to simulate Line 1 of the Mexico City Metrobus, which can be adapted to simulate other bus rapid transit (BRT) systems. We give a detailed description of the model development so that the reader can replicate our model. We developed various response variables in order to evaluate the system’s performance, which focused on passenger satisfaction and measured the maximum occupancy that a passenger experiences inside the buses, as well as the time that he spends in the queues at the stations. The results of the experiments show that it is possible to increase passenger satisfaction by considering different combinations of routes while maintaining the same fuel consumption. It was shown that, by considering an appropriate combination of routes, the average passenger satisfaction could surpass the satisfaction levels obtained by a 10% increase in total fuel consumption.

Keywords

• stochastic simulation
• simulation-based scheduling
• simulation input analysis
• bus rapid transit system