Demand Response Transit Scheduling Research Based on Urban and Rural Transportation Station Optimization

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript focuses on a topic of current importance 

The manuscript should better highlight the novelty of the research in the introductory part 

The manuscript has some grammatical errors and typos. It is necessary to better describe the case study by defining spatial and social aspects i.e., better defining the service and users' propensity to use before and after the DRT service search. 

It is also necessary to. 

1) consider in the introductory part the evolution of the pandemic and how it has had implications on public transport and DRT systems in different contexts .Therefore, reading the following works is recommended :

a) Schasché, S. E., Sposato, R. G., & Hampl, N. (2022). The dilemma of demand-responsive transport services in rural areas: Conflicting expectations and weak user acceptance. Transport Policy, 126, 43-54.

(b) Campisi, T., Canale, A., Tesoriere, G., Ali, N., Ignaccolo, M., & Cocuzza, E. (2022). An Analysis of the Integration of DRT Services with Local Public Transport in Post-pandemic Period: Some of the Preliminary Insights in the Italian Context. In International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (pp. 496-508). Springer, Cham.

 

(c) Abdullah, M., Ali, N., Shah, S. A. H., Javid, M. A., & Campisi, T. (2021). Service quality assessment of app-based demand-responsive public transit services in Lahore, Pakistan. Applied Sciences, 11(4), 1911.

d) Dytckov, S., Persson, J. A., Lorig, F., & Davidsson, P. (2022). Potential Benefits of Demand Responsive Transport in Rural Areas: A Simulation Study in Lolland, Denmark. Sustainability, 14(6), 3252.

 

2) write acronyms in expanded form when they are used for the first time in the text 

3)edit the graphs making them more readable and in line with the journal template

4)insert more comments accompanying each table 5)emphasize research limitations in the concluding section

6)insert more comments accompanying figure 7 and rephrase figures 5 and 6 as unique or insert a single image in their place 

7)insert in high resolution all images by unifying the font of the texts 

Author Response

Responses to reviewer comments:

Dear Editor of Sustainability，

Dear Reviewers of Sustainability，

We thank you very much for giving us an opportunity to revise our manuscript, we appreciate editors and reviewers very much for their positive and constructive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled “Demand Response Transit Scheduling Research Based on Urban and Rural Transportation Station Optimization”.

We have studied reviewer’s comments carefully and have made revisions which were marked in red in the paper. We have tried our best to revise our manuscript according to the comments. Attached please find the revised version, which we would like to submit for your kind consideration.

We would like to express our great appreciation to you and reviewers for comments on our paper.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thank you and best regards.

Yours sincerely,

Peiqing Li, Longlong Jiang, Shunfeng Zhang, Xi Jiang

Corresponding author:

Peiqing Li, Longlong Jiang, Shunfeng Zhang, Xi Jiang

E-mail: [email protected]; Tel.: +86-0571-8507-0214

 

Responds to the reviewer’s comments as follows:

Reviewer #1

1. The manuscript focuses on a topic of current importance.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, We have made the manuscript more focused on the theme " Sustainable Urban and Rural Development ".

 

2. The manuscript should better highlight the novelty of the research in the introductory part

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, we emphasize the reduction of the number of shifts of public transport vehicles in the process of running between urban and rural areas through station optimization, and highlight the novelty of the station-optimized variable-line bus. (Please see 1. Introduction in the revised manuscript)

 

3. The manuscript has some grammatical errors and typos. It is necessary to better describe the case study by defining spatial and social aspects i.e., better defining the service and users' propensity to use before and after the DRT service search.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, We have fixed some grammatical errors and typos. We have added some spatial and social descriptions to better highlight demand passengers' tendency to use DRT services. (Please see 2.1 Problem description the revised manuscript)

 

Specific comments

1.Consider in the introductory part the evolution of the pandemic and how it has had implications on public transport and DRT systems in different contexts .Therefore, reading the following works is recommended :

54. a) Schasché, S. E., Sposato, R. G., & Hampl, N. (2022). The dilemma of demand-responsive transport services in rural areas: Conflicting expectations and weak user acceptance. Transport Policy, 126, 43-54.

(b) Campisi, T., Canale, A., Tesoriere, G., Ali, N., Ignaccolo, M., & Cocuzza, E. (2022). An Analysis of the Integration of DRT Services with Local Public Transport in Post-pandemic Period: Some of the Preliminary Insights in the Italian Context. In International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (pp. 496-508). Springer, Cham.

(c) Abdullah, M., Ali, N., Shah, S. A. H., Javid, M. A., & Campisi, T. (2021). Service quality assessment of app-based demand-responsive public transit services in Lahore, Pakistan. Applied Sciences, 11(4), 1911.

(d) Dytckov, S., Persson, J. A., Lorig, F., & Davidsson, P. (2022). Potential Benefits of Demand Responsive Transport in Rural Areas: A Simulation Study in Lolland, Denmark. Sustainability, 14(6), 3252.

 

Answer: We have participated in four references, please refer to references [1] to [4] for details.

 

2.Write acronyms in expanded form when they are used for the first time in the text.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, we first use of acronyms in the article has now been written in expanded form. (Please see Abstract the revised manuscript)

 

3.Edit the graphs making them more readable and in line with the journal template.

 

Answer:We have modified some figure format of the article according to the requirements of the journal format.

 

4.Insert more comments accompanying each table

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper，we inserted some comments after the table and discussed the limitations of the study at the end.

 

5.emphasize research limitations in the concluding section.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper，we discuss the limitations of the research at the concluding section.

 

6.Insert more comments accompanying figure 7 and rephrase figures 5 and 6 as unique or insert a single image in their place. (Please see 4. Case Study the revised manuscript)

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper，we added some comments to the figure, and changed the way some images are inserted.

 

7.Insert in high resolution all images by unifying the font of the texts.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, we insert all images in high resolution by unifying the font of the text.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1. The term demand responsive transit and demand-response transit were used interchangeably. Need correction for consistency and meaning.

2. There were many ‘reference source not found’ errors. 

3. The problem statement did not convince how urban and rural demand responsive scheduling needs development. 

4. The literature review was superficial, describing some issues of bus scheduling only. For example, how a rural bus is different from an urban bus was not at all mentioned and reviewed, so does its implication for the consequent analysis and result. 

5. The objective said in line 63 was the objective function. What is needed here is the objective of the paper. 

6. The study or content flow was not described, making it difficult to read.

7. Figure 1 and 2 were too rough so need a clear description, e.g., the shifts, alternative site, etc. 

8. The study seems to propose a combined DBScan and K-mean clusterings. However, these were not adequately reviewed, making the proposal rather ad-hoc. 

9. The problem of urban and rural bus operation scheduling was not at all clear. What are the fixed schedule and responsive schedule, both in terms of time and space? How was the reservation represented in the model? This is very unclear. 

10. The optimization programs in (3), (7) and (8) need a better way of explanation and presentation, not just showing the equation and reading out.

11. Why the genetic algorithm was needed is still questionable, given that it is a numerical purpose. However, the contribution in terms of methodology is another story. We need to make it clear. It was said that this was an extension of the vehicle routing problem. Was the simulation to be claimed as a contribution too? 

12. It was not clear how the weights in (8) could be determined, by what ground? 

13. Data collection was not described in enough detail, as associated with Figure 5 and 6. What kind of data were collected? 

14. The results shown in Figure 7 were rough and not meaningful. What are the horizontal and vertical axes? What were the noise points? How was k=2 determined?

15. Figure 8 was not meaningful with the local names, not representing 48.4 km either.

16. It was not clear how the data was used in the numerical simulation and resulted in the four-shift scheduling. Table 1 and 2 were redundant,also Table 3. Probably the explanation was not helpful to understand the result. 

17. It was not described how Omega and Epsilon were calculated to be 0.25 and 1, so do the other parameters in Table 4. This is crucially important.  

18. Figure 9 was not meaningful.

19. It was not clear what were the regional flexible and variable route DRT, so the remaining results were less understandable. 

20. The conclusion section (5) was just a summary of the manuscript but did not illustrate a research contribution of the paper.

Author Response

Responses to reviewer comments:

Dear Editor of Sustainability，

Dear Reviewers of Sustainability，

We thank you very much for giving us an opportunity to revise our manuscript, we appreciate editors and reviewers very much for their positive and constructive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled “Demand Response Transit Scheduling Research Based on Urban and Rural Transportation Station Optimization”.

We have studied reviewer’s comments carefully and have made revisions which were marked in red in the paper. We have tried our best to revise our manuscript according to the comments. Attached please find the revised version, which we would like to submit for your kind consideration.

We would like to express our great appreciation to you and reviewers for comments on our paper.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thank you and best regards.

Yours sincerely,

Peiqing Li, Longlong Jiang, Shunfeng Zhang, Xi Jiang

Corresponding author:

Peiqing Li, Longlong Jiang, Shunfeng Zhang, Xi Jiang

E-mail: [email protected]; Tel.: +86-0571-8507-0214

 

Responds to the reviewer’s comments as follows:

Reviewer #2:

General Comments

 

1.The term demand responsive transit and demand-response transit were used interchangeably. Need correction for consistency and meaning.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, we correct for consistency and meaning.

 

2.The There were many ‘reference source not found’ errors.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, We fixed these "reference source not found" errors.

 

3. The problem statement did not convince how urban and rural demand responsive scheduling needs development.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, We have improved how urban and rural demand responsive scheduling needs to be developed.( Please see 2.1 Problem description the revised manuscript)

 

4. The literature review was superficial, describing some issues of bus scheduling only. For example, how a rural bus is different from an urban bus was not at all mentioned and reviewed, so does its implication for the consequent analysis and result.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, We added a comparison of rural and urban transit to the literature review and refined the subsequent analysis and implications of the results.(Please refer to references [5] to [10] for details.)

 

5. The objective said in line 63 was the objective function. What is needed here is the objective of the paper.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, we clarify the objective of this paper.

 

6. The study or content flow was not described, making it difficult to read.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper，we have added a description of the study in the Introduction section.

 

7. Figure 1 and 2 were too rough so need a clear description, e.g., the shifts, alternative site, etc.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, we have provided more descriptions of the two diagrams, as well as modified and refined Figure 1 and 2 to better illustrate the need to develop variable route-based demand response transit and to optimize stops.( Please see Figure 1 and 2 the revised manuscript)

 

8. 8. The study seems to propose a combined DBScan and K-mean clusterings. However, these were not adequately reviewed, making the proposal rather ad-hoc.

 

Answer: We have participated in four references, please refer to references [36] to [39] for details.

 

9. The problem of urban and rural bus operation scheduling was not at all clear. What are the fixed schedule and responsive schedule, both in terms of time and space? How was the reservation represented in the model? This is very unclear.

 

Answer: The fixed station and alternative station are obtained by processing the information of passenger reservation time and location, where the fixed schedule is required for the bus to respond to the fixed station passengers strictly according to the schedule of that fixed station, and the response schedule is for the bus to respond to the alternative station passengers under the condition of meeting the fixed schedule. The schedule of each station under each schedule has been represented in Table 5 and Table 6.

 

10. The optimization programs in (3), (7) and (8) need a better way of explanation and presentation, not just showing the equation and reading out.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, we optimize the interpretation and representation of the above equations.

 

11. Why the genetic algorithm was needed is still questionable, given that it is a numerical purpose. However, the contribution in terms of methodology is another story. We need to make it clear. It was said that this was an extension of the vehicle routing problem. Was the simulation to be claimed as a contribution too?

 

Answer: We adopt the simulated annealing algorithm for model solving because of the obvious advantages of multi-objective model solving for this study. In addition, we reformulate the contributions of this paper.

 

12. It was not clear how the weights in (8) could be determined, by what ground?

 

Answer：α represents the importance coefficient aiming at the lowest operating cost; β represents the importance coefficient aiming at the shortest passenger travel time, because the model is built based on the two components of lowest operating cost and shortest travel time, and the pursuit of low operating cost (when responding to more passengers) will lead to a long travel time edge, we find the lowest cost of the whole system by changing the values of α and β, so the sum of α and β is a constant value.

 

13. Data collection was not described in enough detail, as associated with Figure 5 and 6. What kind of data were collected?

 

Answer：We collected passenger pick-up and drop-off locations and pick-up times in the urban and rural bus operating areas. Since the type of passengers between urban and rural areas is relatively homogeneous and the trips are concentrated, the appointment times are also concentrated and there are no strict requirements on the arrival time at the end point.

 

14. The results shown in Figure 7 were rough and not meaningful. What are the horizontal and vertical axes? What were the noise points? How was k=2 determined?

 

Answer: We have refined Figure 7 by adding horizontal and vertical axis coordinates. At the same time, k equals to 2 is modified and the number of clusters is 12, that is, k=12. We are categorizing passengers with similar travel locations and travel times according to the previous layer of DBSCAN clustering, which is divided into a total of 12 class sets, and a total of five noise points are eliminated, and then we use K-means clustering to confirm the optimal stations of demand points in these 12 class sets, and in confirming site, the site may not be optimal due to the consideration of the actual road conditions.

 

15. Figure 8 was not meaningful with the local names, not representing 48.4 km either.

 

Answer: We have modified Figure 8 and included a background map of the actual local operating area with a scale to better highlight the study of the article. ( Please see Figure 8 the revised manuscript)

 

16. It was not clear how the data was used in the numerical simulation and resulted in the four-shift scheduling. Table 1 and 2 were redundant,also Table 3. Probably the explanation was not helpful to understand the result.

 

Answer: We added explanations to Tables 1, 2, and 3 to increase the understandability of the results. The four-shift scheduling of buses is issued based on the bus yard fixation, and the schedules of fixed and temporary stops act as constraints and corrections to the bus routes.

 

17. It was not described how Omega and Epsilon were calculated to be 0.25 and 1, so do the other parameters in Table 4. This is crucially important.

 

Answer: The information presented in the paper is not accurate enough, and we have modified the presentation of the article. For the definition of the above parameters, we have assumed the values of these parameters for the solution of the model based on reading a large amount of literature.

 

18. Figure 9 was not meaningful.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, we have added a comparison in Figure 9 to better illustrate the effect of the magnitude of α and β on the cost. ( Please see Figure 9 the revised manuscript)

 

19. It was not clear what were the regional flexible and variable route DRT, so the remaining results were less understandable.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, we have added an explanation of the regional flexible variable route DRT definition after Table 7 for better understanding of the results.

 

20. The conclusion section (5) was just a summary of the manuscript but did not illustrate a research contribution of the paper.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, we add the study contributions and study limitations in the conclusion section of the paper. ( Please see conclusion section (5) the revised manuscript)

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

the manuscript still has several typos and grammatical errors, the images should be included in high resolution, equalizing the font of the wording in the images .they should also be enlarged for better understanding. once this is corrected the paper will be eligible for publication

 

Author Response

Responses to reviewer comments:

Dear Editor of Sustainability，

Dear Reviewers of Sustainability，

We appreciate again editors and reviewers very much for their positive and constructive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled“Demand Response Transit Scheduling Research Based on Urban and Rural Transportation Station Optimization”.

We have studied reviewer’s comments carefully and have made revisions which were marked in red in the paper. We have tried our best to revise our manuscript according to the comments. Attached please find the revised version, which we would like to submit for your kind consideration.

We would like to express our great appreciation to you and reviewers for comments on our paper.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thank you and best regards.

Yours sincerely,

Peiqing Li, Longlong Jiang, Shunfeng Zhang, Xi Jiang

Corresponding author:

Peiqing Li, Longlong Jiang, Shunfeng Zhang, Xi Jiang

E-mail: [email protected]; Tel.: +86-0571-8507-0214

 

Responds to the reviewer’s comments as follows:

Reviewer #1

 

Reviewer 1

1.The manuscript still has several typos and grammatical errors, the images should be included in high resolution, equalizing the font of the wording in the images .They should also be enlarged for better understanding. Once this is corrected the paper will be eligible for publication.

 

Answer: We check English form and grammatical errors and the English language has been polished by a professional English polish company in Elsevier before the submission. And we also invited a visiting professor in our university, who is a native English speaker, to go over the whole revised manuscript and to polish the English language. In addition, we enlarged some of the images in the text to accommodate reading and comprehension, and equalized the text in some of the images in Figure 11 and others.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript has been improved such that it is more understandable and easier to read, with clearer tables and figures. However, in order to emphasize the research achievement, the authors still have much to do. Some points to be considered are as follows.

1. Check equation 7 and 8 for the extra comma

2. Equation 11 and 12 were corrupted.

3. Figure 4 may be enlarged, while Figure 6 is less informative.

4. Recheck the red sentence added after Table 3.

5. It is important to discuss the findings of this study in Section 5, at least in the case study context, with respect to the existing studies, given that many of which were added in the literature review section. Presently the first paragraph of Section 5 sounds like a short summary.

Author Response

Responses to reviewer comments:

Dear Editor of Sustainability，

Dear Reviewers of Sustainability，

We appreciate again editors and reviewers very much for their positive and constructive comments and suggestions on our manuscript entitled“Demand Response Transit Scheduling Research Based on Urban and Rural Transportation Station Optimization”.

We have studied reviewer’s comments carefully and have made revisions which were marked in red in the paper. We have tried our best to revise our manuscript according to the comments. Attached please find the revised version, which we would like to submit for your kind consideration.

We would like to express our great appreciation to you and reviewers for comments on our paper.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thank you and best regards.

Yours sincerely,

Peiqing Li, Longlong Jiang, Shunfeng Zhang, Xi Jiang

Corresponding author:

Peiqing Li, Longlong Jiang, Shunfeng Zhang, Xi Jiang

E-mail: [email protected]; Tel.: +86-0571-8507-0214

 

Responds to the reviewer’s comments as follows:

 

Reviewer #2

1.Check equation 7 and 8 for the extra comma.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, we corrected the comma error in Equations 7 and 8.(Please see Equations 7 and 8 in the revised manuscript)

 

2.Equation 11 and 12 were corrupted.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, we have fixed a bug in Equations 11 and 12. (Please see Equations 11 and 12 in the revised manuscript)

 

3.Figure 4 may be enlarged, while Figure 6 is less informative.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, we have enlarged the figure 4 and added more explanations after the figure 6.(Please see figure 4 and figure 6 after the presentation in the revised manuscript)

 

4.Recheck the red sentence added after Table 3.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper，we rephrased the sentences after Table 3 and made them more concise and easier to understand.(Please see the sentences after Table 3 in the revised manuscript)

 

5.It is important to discuss the findings of this study in Section 5, at least in the case study context, with respect to the existing studies, given that many of which were added in the literature review section. Presently the first paragraph of Section 5 sounds like a short summary.

 

Answer: After the modification of this paper, we highlighted the findings of this paper in the first paragraph of Section 5 and made them more closely related to the content of the paper.(Please see the first paragraph of Section 5 in the revised manuscript)

Author Response File: Author Response.docx