Abstract: In order to solve the problem due to the unbalanced passenger demand, considering the bus companies generally rely on government subsidies and exist financial constraints in urban arterials in China, a single line transit mixed scheduling model for zonal vehicles is proposed. With the target of maximizing the total social benefit, the model simultaneously optimizes the frequencies of zonal and full-length vehicles as well as turn-back point, the impact of financial constraints on transit optimization was explored, proving that financial constraints is equivalent to diminish the values of users’ time. Furthermore, a numerical example was present, and the relation among frequencies, turn-back point, and costs under financial constraints situations were analyzed. With the optimized single scheduling as the base case, the results indicate that mixed scheduling can save vehicles and the passenger travel time as well as its cost under unbalanced demand situations and financial constraints, that the benefits for both operator and users can be obtained by reasonable allocation of vehicle operation form in the case of financial constraints.

Key words: engineering of communications and transportation system, mixed scheduling, zonal vehicle, full-length vehicle, financial constraints, time value