Frequency scheme to improve theoperation of the Megabús integratedmass transport system in Pereira,Colombia

The growing demand for urban mass transport systems has consolidated Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems a cost-effective solution in emerging economies. However, these systems may face oper?ational challenges by high passenger demand or bus interactions at stations, impacting operation’s performance. To address this, our research team developed a microsimulation model based on cellular automata that integrates passenger data. Implemented in C++ and executed from Python, this model considerably reduces computational resources consumption compared to traffic simu?lators, where longer simulation times are observed. Since route frequency has a crucial impact on the operation of BRT systems, the objective of the research is to evaluate the performance of a real-word BRT system according to different route frequency schemes, the model is applied to the Megabús BRT system in Pereira, Colombia. This document is structured around three research articles, each contributing to the fulfillment of our main objective.