Improved estimation of commuter waiting times using headway and commuter boarding information

Muhamad Azfar Ramli, Vasundhara Jayaraman, Hyen Chee Kwek, Kian Heong Tan, Gary Lee Kee Khoon and Christopher Monterola

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2018, vol. 501, issue C, 217-226

Abstract: The average amount of waiting time spent by commuters is one of the key indicators of service quality for public bus operations. While actual measurements of actual waiting time is difficult to be done en masse, models of waiting time can be derived from bus headways and these models have been adopted by transport planners in monitoring and regulating service reliability of operators. However, these models are founded on several assumptions on the patterns of commuter arrival which may not be applicable for bus services that experience high demand and heavily fluctuating commuter patterns. Given the availability of granular data on commuter boarding from automated fare collection systems, we propose a new methodology to better estimate the average waiting time of commuters. The formulation is anchored and validated using a three-month dataset from ten selected bus routes in Singapore. Finally, we discuss how our new measure allows for minimization of commuter waiting time through schedule optimization.

Keywords: Public bus operations; Average commuter waiting time; Headway; Bus arrival reliability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437117312700
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:501:y:2018:i:c:p:217-226

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2017.12.022

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().