Understanding bus service reliability : a practical framework using AVL/APC data

Service reliability on a transit system can have significant impacts on its provider and both existing and potential users. To passengers, unreliable service affects their perception of service quality and transit utility compared to other mode choices, while to transit agencies, this translates to loss of ridership and revenues and higher costs to provide additional service to compensate for poor service operations. The introduction of technologies such as Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and Automatic Passenger Counters (APC) provides the opportunity to gather large sets of data at relatively low cost and evaluate service to improve performance, schedule planning and operations control. This thesis presents a comprehensive review of key elements of service reliability, focused on the measures of reliability, the causes of unreliability and the application of strategies to improve service. The most significant causes of service reliability are presented: deviations at terminals, passenger loads, running times, environmental factors (or externalities) and operator behavior. Each is reviewed in terms of how they impact service and the complexities and interrelationship between different causes are explored. Also reviewed are the potential preventive and corrective strategies, and the links between the causes of service unreliability and best strategy according to the source of problems. A practical framework is developed to assess service reliability, exploring the uses of Automated Data Collection (ADC) systems to characterize service reliability and evaluate the causes of unreliability that may exist. Its goal is to serve as a guide for transit agencies to begin to analyze the large sets of data available from these systems

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Cham, Laura Cecilia

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Nigel H.M. Wilson.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34381

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34381