Revisiting the Impacts of Transit Real-time Information on Waiting Time Reduction: An Empirical Analysis in Columbus, Ohio

Keywords: Public transit; Real-time information; Mobile apps.
Session Type: Virtual Paper
Day: Thursday
Session Start / End Time: 4/8/2021 09:35 AM (Pacific Time (US & Canada)) - 4/8/2021 10:50 AM (Pacific Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 33

Abstract

Real-time information (RTI) in public transit systems showed its potential to reduce waiting times by allowing passengers to appropriately time their arrivals at transit stops. Although prior research investigated the overall impact of RTI on waiting time, few studies examine the mechanisms underlying these claims and spatiotemporal variations in its effectiveness. In this paper, we investigate two sources of RTI-based users’ waiting time penalties: reclaimed delay (bus drivers compensating for being behind schedule) and discontinuity delay (an artifact of the update frequency of RTI). We benchmark two RTI-based strategies: the greedy strategy used by many popular trip planning apps and a prudent strategy with an insurance buffer – with non-RTI benchmarks of arbitrary arrival and following the schedule. Using real-time GTFS bus location data from a medium-sized US city, we calculate the empirical waiting times and risk of missing a bus for each strategy. We find that the best RTI strategy, a prudent tactic with an optimized insurance time buffer, performs roughly the same as the simple, follow-the-schedule tactic that does not use RTI. However, relative performance shows very high spatiotemporal variations. Moreover, the greedy tactic in many common transit apps has the worst performance, even worse than showing up at a bus stop arbitrarily. These results suggest limitations on claims that RTI can always reduce public transit waiting times.