Human factors approach towards improving readability of bus schedules

Due to an increasing concern over the readability of existing bus schedules of a public transportation agency the schedule format was redesigned. Two prototype schedules were designed based on the gathered information from the literature survey, focus group meetings and data from other public transportation agencies' schedules. One of the prototypes was designed by giving primary importance to the direction of travel and was named the directional prototype schedule. The other prototype was designed by giving primary importance to the day of the week, and was named weekday / weekend prototype schedule. A time based laboratory experiment and a subjective survey with twenty-six participants were conducted to test the representational modifications against the existing ones. The analysis of the experimental data showed statistical significance only in the zone representation. Zones are used for calculation of the fares for travel. They have been represented differently in the new prototypes, and was preferred over the current one. Participants more often than not assigned rank three to the current schedule as compared to rank one or two. Another observation was that the average number of errors committed in the test by the participants having just a high school level of education was over 35%. The performance of the participants kept improving along with the increase in the level of education. This is an issue of concern because large percentage of people who use the bus schedules of the public transportation agency are people with just high school level of education or even lower.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science in Industrial Engineering - (M.S.)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Year

2004

Author dc:creator

• Tharanathan, Anand

Contributors dc:contributor

• One-Jang Jeng
• Athanassios K. Bladikas
• Sanchoy K. Das

• Public transportation
• Bus schedules
• Readability
• Industrial Engineering

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/theses/573

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.njit.edu:theses-1572