IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/transa/v75y2015icp84-95.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rethinking bus punctuality by integrating Automatic Vehicle Location data and passenger patterns

Author

Listed:
  • Barabino, Benedetto
  • Di Francesco, Massimo
  • Mozzoni, Sara

Abstract

This paper investigates punctuality at bus stops. Although it is typically evaluated from the point of view of bus operators, it must also account for users, as required in recent service quality norms. Therefore, evaluating punctuality at bus stops is highly important, but may also be a complex task, because data on both bus arrivals (or departures) and users must be taken into account and processed. Data on buses can be collected by Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) systems, but several challenges must be addressed in order to use them effectively. Passengers data at bus stops cannot be derived from AVL, but they can be used to derive passenger patterns and need to be integrated into processed AVL data. This paper proposes a new punctuality measure defined as the fraction of passengers who will be served within an acceptably short interval after they arrive. A method is proposed to determine this measure: it provides (i) several rules to handle AVL collected data, (ii) a procedure integrating processed AVL data and potential passengers’ patterns and (iii) a hierarchical process to perform the punctuality measure on each bus route direction of a transit network, as well as for every bus stop and time period. The paper illustrates the experimentation of this method on more than 4,000,000 data of a real bus operator and represents outcomes by easy-to-read control dashboards.

Suggested Citation

  • Barabino, Benedetto & Di Francesco, Massimo & Mozzoni, Sara, 2015. "Rethinking bus punctuality by integrating Automatic Vehicle Location data and passenger patterns," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 84-95.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:75:y:2015:i:c:p:84-95
    DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2015.03.012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856415000543
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.tra.2015.03.012?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chen, Xumei & Yu, Lei & Zhang, Yushi & Guo, Jifu, 2009. "Analyzing urban bus service reliability at the stop, route, and network levels," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 43(8), pages 722-734, October.
    2. J. K. Jolliffe & T. P. Hutchinson, 1975. "A Behavioural Explanation of the Association Between Bus and Passenger Arrivals at a Bus Stop," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 9(3), pages 248-282, August.
    3. F McLeod, 2007. "Estimating bus passenger waiting times from incomplete bus arrivals data," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 58(11), pages 1518-1525, November.
    4. Philippe H. J. Marguier & Avishai Ceder, 1984. "Passenger Waiting Strategies for Overlapping Bus Routes," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(3), pages 207-230, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Benedetto Barabino & Nicola Aldo Cabras & Claudio Conversano & Alessandro Olivo, 2020. "An Integrated Approach to Select Key Quality Indicators in Transit Services," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 149(3), pages 1045-1080, June.
    2. Rusul Abduljabbar & Hussein Dia & Sohani Liyanage & Saeed Asadi Bagloee, 2019. "Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Transport: An Overview," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-24, January.
    3. Ulrik Berggren & Carmelo D’Agostino & Helena Svensson & Karin Brundell-Freij, 2022. "Intrapersonal variability in public transport path choice due to changes in service reliability," Transportation, Springer, vol. 49(6), pages 1517-1547, December.
    4. Liping Ge & Malek Sarhani & Stefan Voß & Lin Xie, 2021. "Review of Transit Data Sources: Potentials, Challenges and Complementarity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-37, October.
    5. Ramli, Muhamad Azfar & Jayaraman, Vasundhara & Kwek, Hyen Chee & Tan, Kian Heong & Lee Kee Khoon, Gary & Monterola, Christopher, 2018. "Improved estimation of commuter waiting times using headway and commuter boarding information," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 501(C), pages 217-226.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guido Gentile & Sang Nguyen & Stefano Pallottino, 2005. "Route Choice on Transit Networks with Online Information at Stops," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(3), pages 289-297, August.
    2. Mohammad Reza Amin-Naseri & Vahid Baradaran, 2015. "Accurate Estimation of Average Waiting Time in Public Transportation Systems," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(2), pages 213-222, May.
    3. Mark D. Hickman, 2001. "An Analytic Stochastic Model for the Transit Vehicle Holding Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(3), pages 215-237, August.
    4. Andres, Matthias & Nair, Rahul, 2017. "A predictive-control framework to address bus bunching," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 123-148.
    5. de Palma, André & Lindsey, Robin, 2001. "Optimal timetables for public transportation," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 789-813, September.
    6. Nyaki Prosper S. & Bwire Hannibal & Mushule Nurdin K., 2020. "Travel Time Reliability of Bus Operation in Heterogeneous Traffic Conditions of Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania," LOGI – Scientific Journal on Transport and Logistics, Sciendo, vol. 11(2), pages 44-55, November.
    7. Carey, Malachy & Kwiecinski, Andrzej, 1995. "Properties of expected costs and performance measures in stochastic models of scheduled transport," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 182-199, May.
    8. Belgacem Bouzaïene-Ayari & Michel Gendreau & Sang Nguyen, 2001. "Modeling Bus Stops in Transit Networks: A Survey and New Formulations," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(3), pages 304-321, August.
    9. Ji, Yanjie & Gao, Liangpeng & Chen, Dandan & Ma, Xinwei & Zhang, Ruochen, 2018. "How does a static measure influence passengers’ boarding behaviors and bus dwell time? Simulated evidence from Nanjing bus stations," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 13-25.
    10. Pilachowski, Joshua Michael, 2009. "An Approach to Reducing Bus Bunching," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt6zc5j8xg, University of California Transportation Center.
    11. Büchel, Beda & Corman, Francesco, 2022. "Modeling conditional dependencies for bus travel time estimation," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 592(C).
    12. Hassan, Mohammad Nurul & Hawas, Yaser E. & Ahmed, Kamran, 2013. "A multi-dimensional framework for evaluating the transit service performance," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 47-61.
    13. Nassir, Neema & Hickman, Mark & Ma, Zhen-Liang, 2019. "A strategy-based recursive path choice model for public transit smart card data," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 528-548.
    14. Chen, Zebin & Li, Shukai & D’Ariano, Andrea & Yang, Lixing, 2022. "Real-time optimization for train regulation and stop-skipping adjustment strategy of urban rail transit lines," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    15. Violeta Lukic Vujadinovic & Aleksandar Damnjanovic & Aleksandar Cakic & Dragan R. Petkovic & Marijana Prelevic & Vladan Pantovic & Mirjana Stojanovic & Dejan Vidojevic & Djordje Vranjes & Istvan Bodol, 2024. "AI-Driven Approach for Enhancing Sustainability in Urban Public Transportation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(17), pages 1-18, September.
    16. Miguel Loyola & Yoram Shiftan & Haim Aviram & Hector Monterde-i-Bort, 2019. "Impact of Public Transport Context Situation and Culture on Mode Choice," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-12, January.
    17. Klumpenhouwer, W. & Wirasinghe, S.C., 2018. "Optimal time point configuration of a bus route - A Markovian approach," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 117(PA), pages 209-227.
    18. Ichoua, Soumia & Gendreau, Michel & Potvin, Jean-Yves, 2003. "Vehicle dispatching with time-dependent travel times," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 379-396, January.
    19. Alexander Webb & Pramesh Kumar & Alireza Khani, 2020. "Estimation of passenger waiting time using automatically collected transit data," Public Transport, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 299-311, June.
    20. Chakrabarti, Sandip & Giuliano, Genevieve, 2015. "Does service reliability determine transit patronage? Insights from the Los Angeles Metro bus system," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 12-20.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:transa:v:75:y:2015:i:c:p:84-95. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/547/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.