Evaluation of Bus Transit Reliability in the District of Columbia

On-time arrival at bus stops is one of the performance metrics of the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority (WMATA). A bus is considered to be on time by WMATA if it arrives at most two minutes earlier or seven minutes later than the scheduled arrival times, with a performance goal of 78%. Most regional transit agencies consider arrivals that fall within one minute earlier or five minutes later than the scheduled arrival times as being on time. The goal of this project was to determine the on-time performance and their statistical significance based on WMATA’s advertised threshold and the industry standard for on-time arrivals. Fifteen bus routes in Washington DC with several stops were studied in this research. WMATA’s published bus schedules provided expected arrival times. An on-board manual survey was conducted from June 2012 through June 2013 for peak morning and afternoon travel on those routes during which the actual arrival times at the bus stops were noted and compared with the scheduled arrival times. For WMATA’s two-minutes-early and seven-minutes-late arrival threshold, the buses were found to be on time approximately 82% of the time, on average, during the morning. In the evening, for the same threshold, only 68% of the buses on average were considered to be on time. This results in an overall on-time performance of 75%, which is a modest improvement over the 2010 on-time performance of 74%. Based on the one-minute-early and five-minutes-late arrival threshold used by several regional transit agencies, the buses were found to be on time approximately 67% of the time during the morning and 55% in the evening, resulting in an overall performance of 61%.

• Record URL:
  • http://transweb.sjsu.edu/PDFs/research/1139-DC-bus-transit-reliability.pdf
• 
• Supplemental Notes:
  • This research was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation, University Transportation Centers program.
• Corporate Authors:

  Mineta National Transit Research Consortium

  San José State University
  210 North 4th Street
  San José, CA  United States  95112

  San Jose State University

  Mineta Transportation Institute, 210 North 4th Street
  San Jose, CA  United States  95192-0219

  California Department of Transportation

  Division of Research and Innovation
  1227 O Street, MS-83
  Sacramento, CA  United States  94273-0001

  Research and Innovative Technology Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Authors:
  • Arhin, Stephen
  • Noel, Errol C
• Publication Date: 2013-11

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Edition: Final Report
• Features: Bibliography; Figures; Tables;
• Pagination: 52p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Arrivals and departures; Bus transit; On time performance; Performance measurement; Reliability; Standards
• Identifier Terms: Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority
• Subject Areas: Operations and Traffic Management; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01514600
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: UC Berkeley Transportation Library
• Report/Paper Numbers: CA-MNTRC-13-1139, MNTRC Report 12-14
• Contract Numbers: DTRT12-G-UTC21
• Files: UTC, TRIS, RITA, USDOT
• Created Date: Feb 19 2014 1:51PM