Empirical analysis of the reliability of a bus route with several time points
Date
2014-04-17
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Abstract
Many factors were used to build a bus reliability measurement framework to optimize the operation of a bus route. It was found that, at the time point level, the amount of the slack time inserted into the route is always the key method in recovering reliability. The number and locations of the time points also play a significant role in impacting bus service reliability.
Several surveys, including ride check and point check surveys, were conducted in the summer of 2012 to collect data. Distribution fitting was utilized in this research to determine the regularity of bus running time. Linear regression then was used to show the importance of each factor in affecting bus running time. As with the results of previous research studies, bus running time was critically influenced by link lengths, and signal intersections and bus dwell times at stops. Dwell times also proved to be significantly impacted by passenger activities, i.e. boarding and alighting.
Reliability, as set by running time, was employed to analyze the optimal design of routes with different conditions. It was shown that travel speed is definitely the key factor in running time and is significantly affected by traffic conditions; and, scheduled running time influence different bus travel speeds. Therefore, determination of the scheduled running time is a trade-off between operator and customer costs, which is always the major goal of the transit planner.
In route design, the number and locations of bus stops, particularly time points, critically relate to the reliability of a route.
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Engineering--Civil
Citation
Sun, L. (2014). Empirical analysis of the reliability of a bus route with several time points (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25881