Evaluation of bus transit reliability in the District of Columbia.

Details

• Creators:
  Arhin, Stephen ; Noel, Errol C.
• Corporate Creators:
  Mineta National Transit Research Consortium
• Corporate Contributors:
  United States. Department of Transportation. Research and Innovative Technology Administration ; California. Department of Transportation
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Bus transit
  • Reliability
  • Performance measurement
  • On time performance
  • Travel time
  • Customer satisfaction
  • Surveys
  • Standards
• Publication/ Report Number:
  CA-MNTRC-13-1139
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  Washington (District of Columbia)
• Corporate Publisher:
  Mineta Transportation Institute
• Abstract:
  Several performance metrics can be used to assess the reliability of a transit system. These include on-time arrivals, travel-time ; adherence, run-time adherence, and customer satisfaction, among others. On-time arrival at bus stops is one of the performance ; metrics of the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority (WMATA). A bus is considered to be on time by WMATA if it arrives at ; most two minutes earlier or seven minutes later than the scheduled arrival times, with a performance goal of 78%. Most regional ; transit agencies consider arrivals that fall within one minute earlier or five minutes later than the scheduled arrival times as being ; on time. The goal of this project was to determine the on-time performance and their statistical significance based on WMATA’s ; advertised threshold and the industry standard for on-time arrivals. Fifteen bus routes in Washington DC with several stops were ; studied in this research. WMATA’s published bus schedules provided expected arrival times. An on-board manual survey was ; conducted from June 2012 through June 2013 for peak morning and afternoon travel on those routes during which the actual ; arrival times at the bus stops were noted and compared with the scheduled arrival times. For WMATA’s two-minutes-early and ; seven-minutes-late arrival threshold, the buses were found to be on time approximately 82% of the time, on average, during the ; morning. In the evening, for the same threshold, only 68% of the buses on average were considered to be on time. This results ; in an overall on-time performance of 75%, which is a modest improvement over the 2010 on-time performance of 74%. Based on ; the one-minute-early and five-minutes-late arrival threshold used by several regional transit agencies, the buses were found to be ; on time approximately 67% of the time during the morning and 55% in the evening, resulting in an overall performance of 61%.
  More +
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  DTRT12-G-UTC21
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/26843/dot_26843_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.68 MB]
• Collection(s):
  University Transportation Centers ; US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:466be98743211d8479c89a393a33d0bc326903dcc4941303087e3e482a998fe7d42cc98d5890ad82dd6f631813dc613b0a82450ac5d907ac3ce6b817dd5c84a5