Incorporating Unreliability of Transit in Transport Demand Models: Theoretical and Practical Approach

Nowadays, transport demand models do not explicitly evaluate the impacts of service reliability of transit. Service reliability of transit systems is adversely experienced by users, as it causes additional travel time and unsecure arrival times. Because of this, travelers are likely to perceive a higher utility from higher reliable transport systems. In order to mimic and measure the impacts of service reliability on a transit demand model a three-step approach is proposed using intelligent transport systems data. The approach consists of determining the probabilistic distribution of transit trip times, defining demand patterns and estimating the average impacts of unreliability per passenger. This approach was successfully tested on the model of the city of Utrecht in The Netherlands. By adding service reliability as a variable parameter of transit systems the results of the demand model improved showing that the absolute difference between the observed and the estimated demand decreased by 18%. In addition, the proposed approach allows measuring the effects of expected changes in level of service reliability on traveler behavior. Finally, the authors have identified future research topics required to improve the estimation of those effects.

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• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP015 Transit Capacity and Quality of Service.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • van Oort, Niels
  • Brands, Ties
  • de Romph, Erik
  • Aceves Flores, Jessica
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Level of service; Public transit; Reliability; Travel behavior; Travel demand; Travel time
• Geographic Terms: Utrecht (Netherlands)
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01516383
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-1005
• Files: PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 28 2014 1:32PM