Level of Service Measures for an Urban Bus Route

Wimalasiri Devasurendra, Kaushan

Level of Service Measures for an Urban Bus Route

dc.contributor.advisor	Wirasinghe, Sumedha Chandana
dc.contributor.advisor	Kattan, Lina
dc.contributor.author	Wimalasiri Devasurendra, Kaushan
dc.contributor.committeemember	Saidi, Saeid
dc.contributor.committeemember	Waters, Nigel Michael
dc.contributor.committeemember	Nowicki, Edwin Peter
dc.contributor.committeemember	Mehran, Babak
dc.date	2023-11
dc.date.accessioned	2023-07-17T17:59:53Z
dc.date.available	2023-07-17T17:59:53Z
dc.date.issued	2023-07
dc.description.abstract	The ability to measure the level of the quality of transit service provided is of utmost importance for customers to assess the level of service they receive and for the transit agency to assess the effectiveness of the service improvements made. Despite its importance, the transportation industry lacks an efficient, widely accepted, and widely applicable overall level of service (LOS) measure. Specifically, one that can assess and compare the overall quality of service (QOS) of transit lines or systems or one that can compare different operational performances of the same transit line or system is needed. The content of the thesis consists of four major parts. The first part critically reviews major domains of transit level of service (TLOS) measures in industry and academic literature. It focuses on the success in achieving anticipated goals as opposed to the requirement of such a measure. Existing measures fall short in incorporating a combined view of both the passenger and operator and in assessing the overall TLOS by a single measure. A new approach to evaluate TLOS is proposed that has the potential to address these drawbacks. The second part of the thesis proposes a novel approach to measure the LOS with respect to the value of time (VoT) distribution of the passengers. An implied VoT representing the LOS of a particular attribute, a combination of attributes, or overall service is derived and is compared with the respective VoT distribution of the passengers to obtain the LOS. An approach to distinguish LOS grades depending on the standard deviation (SD) of the VoT distribution is proposed. The third part of the thesis engages in developing three LOS measures representing five attributes of concern in the thesis. Accordingly, a measure to represent headway and crowding attributes, a measure to represent access and travel time attributes, and a measure to represent the reliability attribute are developed. Each measure represents an implied VoT figure obtained by simulating an existing operation using an analytical model of optimum operation related to the service attributes of concern. The analytical model of optimum operation is developed from the basics for reliability LOS measure, while for other measures, existing models in the literature are modified and used. Finally, the three measures developed are combined using a novel approach to represent the overall LOS of a bus route. The development of each LOS measure is accompanied by a numerical example explaining the calculation of the LOS of a bus route. The fourth and final part of the thesis applies the developed measures to a bus route operation in Calgary. The data for the bus route is obtained from Calgary Transit for the year 2021. While each chapter discusses the derived LOS measure and draws conclusions, the final chapter provides insights into potential improvements to the suggested approaches and potential future research related to the developed work.
dc.identifier.citation	Wimalasiri Devasurendra, K. (2023). Level of service measures for an urban bus route (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1880/116750
dc.identifier.uri	https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/41592
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher.faculty	Schulich School of Engineering
dc.publisher.institution	University of Calgary
dc.rights	University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.
dc.subject	Transit Planning
dc.subject	Transit Level of Service
dc.subject	Quality of Service
dc.subject	Quality Measures
dc.subject	Value of Time
dc.subject	Information Entropy
dc.subject	Transit Passenger Perception
dc.subject	Transit Operator Concerns
dc.subject	Overall Level of Service
dc.subject.classification	Engineering--Civil
dc.subject.classification	Sociology--Transportation
dc.subject.classification	Urban and Regional Planning
dc.subject.classification	Sociology--Theory and Methods
dc.title	Level of Service Measures for an Urban Bus Route
dc.type	doctoral thesis
thesis.degree.discipline	Engineering – Civil
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Calgary
thesis.degree.name	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
ucalgary.thesis.accesssetbystudent	I do not require a thesis withhold – my thesis will have open access and can be viewed and downloaded publicly as soon as possible.