Quantifying the impact of real-time information on transit ridership

Public transit;Real-time information

Brakewood, Candace Elizabeth ; Watkins, Kari Civil and Environmental Engineering Mokhtarian, Patricia Barbeau, Sean Guensler, Randall Klein, Hans ; Watkins, Kari

University:Georgia Institute of Technology

Department:Civil and Environmental Engineering

关键词: Public transit;    Real-time information;   

Others  :  https://smartech.gatech.edu/bitstream/1853/54029/1/BRAKEWOOD-DISSERTATION-2014.pdf

美国|英语

来源: SMARTech Repository

【 摘 要 】

Public transit agencies often struggle with service reliability issues; when a bus or train does not arrive on time, passengers become frustrated and may be less likely to choose transit for future trips.To address reliability problems, transit authorities increasingly provide real-time vehicle location and arrival information to riders via web-enabled and mobile devices.Although prior studies have found several benefits of offering this information to passengers, researchers have had difficulty determining if real-time information affects ridership levels.Therefore, the objective of this dissertation is to quantify the impact of real-time information on public transit ridership.Statistical and econometric methods were used to analyze passenger behavior in three American cities that share a common real-time information platform: New York City, Tampa, and Atlanta.New York City was the setting for a natural experiment in which real-time bus information was gradually launched on a borough-by-borough basis over a three year period.Panel regression techniques were used to evaluate route-level bus ridership while controlling for changes in transit service, fares, local socioeconomic conditions, weather, and other factors.In Tampa, a behavioral experiment was performed with a before-after control group design in which access to real-time bus information was the treatment variable and web-based surveys measured behavior changes over a three month period.In Atlanta, a methodology to combine smart card fare collection data with web-based survey responses was developed to quantify changes in transit travel of individual riders in a before-after study.In summary, each study utilized different data sources and quantitative methods to assess changes in transit ridership.The results varied between cities and suggest that the impact of real-time information on transit travel is greatest in locations that have high levels of transit service.These findings have immediate implications for decision-makers at transit agencies, who often face pressure to increase ridership with limited resources.