Research Summary: Increasing Service Reliability by Adding a Dedicated Right of Way for Buses

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Increasing Service Reliability by Adding a Dedicated Right of Way for Buses [Research Summary]
• Creators:
  Song, Ying
• Corporate Creators:
  Minnesota. Department of Transportation
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  Bus Lanes Data Fusion Passenger Counting Public Transit Reliability Right Of Way (Traffic)
• Resource Type:
  Brief
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States ; Minnesota
• Edition:
  Research Summary
• Contracting Officer:
  Patel, Amrish
• Corporate Publisher:
  Minnesota. Department of Transportation
• Abstract:
  Transit services connect people to jobs and opportunities, fostering vibrant communities and multimodal travel along service corridors. A transit right-of-way (ROW) can help buses bypass congestion and stay on schedule. Many studies have proved that transit ROWs effectively improve service reliability and reduce user costs. However, these studies often focus on one or two service corridors, limiting comprehensive impact assessment. This project addresses this gap by investigating service reliability for all route segments across a transit system. The authors derived reliability metrics at the route segment level using high-resolution automatic vehicle location (AVL) and automatic passenger count (APC) data collected in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. The authors then collected and integrated data from various sources via spatial-temporal computing to capture service characteristics, operating environments, traffic conditions, and land-use features along route segments. The authors applied the Gradient Boosting Model (GBM) to examine nonlinear relationships between these factors and bus travel time reliability. Lastly, the authors used the trained model to estimate potential improvements in reliability with dedicated ROWs. Through these steps, the authors worked with members of the Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) to illustrate the methodology and demonstrate its utility for transit agencies. Specifically, the results proved that the ratio of bus lanes and busways was associated with more reliable travel time along route segments. The authors also found that route segments along a few service corridors with unreliable services can greatly benefit from implementing a dedicated ROW.
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  (c) 1036342 (wo) 9
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:3541c8b4a492c17f04a2695f8449b403e2e29021af135d953fd514e74cdaaa2324b3b2ff4d612bf345b225f4ba8e68c5d8f3f1c53c22264bb56d476b92f628c2
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/87549/dot_87549_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 678.27 KB ]