Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability (2020) / Chapter Skim
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-1 Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-2 1.0 Introduction This report summarizes Task 6 of the TCRP Project A-42," Minutes Matter: A Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability." The original intent in Task 6 was to work with one or more transit agency partners to participate in a demonstration study to identify the impact of specific reliability strategies, including the costs and benefits of such strategies through "before" and "after" data collection and analysis. However, there was a limited response by agencies to partner in such field demonstration studies as part of the research, as identified through follow-up agency contacts after the initial transit agency survey was completed.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-3 Large Agencies o New York City Transit (New York, New York) o Chicago Transit Authority (Chicago, Illinois)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-4 Reliability Measures and Standards What elements of reliability does the agency monitor? Punctuality of service?
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-5 2.0 Case Study Findings 2.1 Large Transit Agencies 2.1.1 New York City Transit Service Area Area Population Number of Bus Routes Size of Fixed-Route Bus Fleet Annual Passenger Miles Annual Trips Annual Vehicle Revenue Miles 321 sq. miles 8,550,405 312 3,286 Buses 1.6 billion 743.8 million 86.9 million The TCRP A-42 interview with New York City Transit (NYCT)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-6 compared against a previous years' performance to ensure that the agency is accomplishing its mission of improving year-to-year and identifying solutions to specific problems. With the abundance of information that is now available, route managers can view individual bus operator on-time performance in real-time and can address issues and delays as they occur.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-7 NYCT takes a very data-driven approach through a system which is being rolled out and provides bus operations data through GPS feeds daily. The system provides more than six million records per day, and it is anticipated that this data system and the changes that it will require to fullysupport internal and external processes and procedures will be fully operational within two years.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-8 Table 2.1 - NYCT Bus On-Time Performance Summary by Route
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-9 Table 2.2 - NYCT Bus Performance Indicator Summary
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-10 Table 2.3 - NYCT Road Calls Service Availability
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-11 Diagnosing and Treating Reliability Issues There is coordination and communication between the offices and the command centers. Dispatchers use a color coding system to communicate to supervisors those situations which need immediate attention and incident management such as accidents, road calls or other operator driven communication.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-12 7% growth in ridership 8-11% decrease in travel time 10% improvement in reliability 96% customer satisfaction rating The improvements along this corridor serve as a model for similar short, high-ridership crosstown routes, with the M79 along 79th Street scheduled for SBS implementation in spring 2017. It should be noted that the Second Avenue Subway service began operation a year and a half after the start of the M86 SBS.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-13 Bus Bunching: Measured as two buses running within 60 seconds of each other passing a fixed point, using departure from that point as the measure. The purpose of CTA's monthly performance metrics is to set internal goals for agency performance to encourage improvement and establish accountability.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-14 Table 2.4 – CTA Monthly Performance
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-15 Diagnosing and Treating Reliability Issues Routes selected for on-street supervision are prioritized based on several criteria such as: routes with highest ridership, how long since running time has been evaluated, changes to street and area conditions, and where the three primary reliability measures – departures, bunching or gaps have been flagged as below target. In addition to the supervisors, dispatchers at the control center monitor and relay information on service delays or interruptions via the Clever Cad system.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-16 5. Request adjustment to traffic timings along the reroute to improve overall traffic flow.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-17 and publishes reports, and the Operations Department, which has responsibility for putting service on the street. With the expansion of routes that are being operated at more frequent headways there is a perception among planners that there is a need to get more people to see the benefits of headway management.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-18 Reliability Data Collection, Analysis and Reporting VIA staff have used a variety of data sources for reliability measurement, including several types of technology (e.g. APC and AVL data)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-19 sustaining that level of personnel deployment is currently not feasible from a budgeting perspective. The headway maintenance was especially beneficial in decreasing bus bunching which was adversely affecting reliability.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-20 2.1.4 Regional Transportation District Service Area Area Population Number of Bus Routes Size of Fixed-Route Bus Fleet Annual Passenger Miles Annual Trips Annual Vehicle Revenue Miles 2,342 sq. miles 2,920,000 138 873 buses 338.6 million 73.3 million 36.8 million The TCRP A-42 interview with Regional Transportation District (RTD)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-21 Late: 1 minute to 5 minutes late Very Late: 5 minutes to 30 minutes late In addition to on-time performance, RTD monitors reliability factors by trip and by time period, including: miles between road calls, service availability, customer response time and complaints and variability of running time (on a trip-by-trip basis)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-22 Reliability Data Collection, Analysis and Reporting Beginning in 2014, RTD began using only INIT CAD/AVL/APC (Computer Aided Dispatch/Automated Vehicle Locator/APC) data along with their Station Starter data.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-23 RTD does not include on-time data from some days which are ‘atypical', e.g. due to snow when there are a significant number of buses that do not run on time.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-24 The TCRP A-42 interview with Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) was held September 25, 2017 with the following individuals: Dan Nguyen (Deputy Executive Officer, Operations)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-25 Reliability Data Collection, Analysis and Reporting Like many other transit agencies, Metro uses APC data to measure bus system reliability, recorded at timepoints. The same APC system has been in use since 2004 and generally works well, although plans are in development to move to the next generation for this technology to improve accuracy and reduce required maintenance.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-26 transit signal priority. There has been a goal of trying to establish a countywide program, but that is considered a long-term effort.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-27 Figure 2.3 – Metro Silver Line On-Time Performance 2.1.6 Transport for London Service Area Area Population Number of Bus Routes Size of Fixed-Route Bus Fleet Annual Passenger Miles Annual Trips Annual Vehicle Revenue Miles 977 sq. miles 8,788,000 675 routes 9,300 buses 5.16 billion 1.37 billion 305 million The TCRP A-42 interview with Transport for London (TfL)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-28 Reliability Measures and Standards For frequent services (every 12 minutes or more frequent) , TfL uses Excess Wait Time (EWT)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-29 Figure 2.4 – TfL Run Time Variability Example Figure 2.5 – TfL Passenger Journey Time Graph using ODX Data Reliability Data Collection, Analysis and Reporting iBus records bus movement on a continual basis, and separates reporting into daytime (05:00 to 23:59) and nighttime (00:00 to 04:59)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-30 exported into other software, but this is done before the raw data is deleted from iBus after 2 years. Data feeding standard reports in Hyperion is retained for a rolling two-year period and so creating a longer time series of data requires the results to be recorded separately Even with special events taking place in London on a regular occasion, most of the bus reliability data is maintained in overall performance scores.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-31 Figure 2.6 – Reliability Compared to Contract Type TfL is implementing several strategies to continue addressing reliability, which is believed to be instrumental in the current reduction in bus ridership, including: Roads Reliability Plan (RRP) – This is an amalgamation of work across TfL's departments to ensure coherency and alignment of activity internally and with key stakeholders (e.g.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-32 2.2 Medium Transit Agencies 2.2.1 Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Agency Service Area Area Population Number of Bus Routes Size of Fixed-Route Bus Fleet Annual Passenger Miles Annual Trips Annual Vehicle Revenue Miles 262 sq. miles 845,303 40 299 buses 83.3 million 15.0 million 9.6 million The TCRP A-42 interview with Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Agency (SORTA)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-33 presented to the SORTA Board monthly as measures of local service or express service. KPIs also include information related to ridership and revenue.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-34 SORTA has APCs installed on 25-30 percent of the fleet and they anticipate continuing to add more APCs. There is other technology on the SORTA wish list including getting turn-by-turn software installed on buses so that substitute operators could be more self-guided.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-35 SORTA has a zone based fare system which also affects boarding time and thus on-time performance. From a long-term perspective, they are studying the potential for an off-board fare payment system.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-36 ridership and reliability and thus has created a culture of measuring on-time performance and reporting results to the policy board and to executive leadership. Reliability Program Organizational Structure At Pierce Transit, the Planning Department takes the lead in working with the IT and Operations Departments regarding service reliability.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-37 Figure 2.9 – Pierce Transit On-Time Performance for Top Seven Fixed Routes Diagnosing and Treating Reliability Issues Each day, Pierce Transit supervisors view activity regularly and receive anecdotal information from operators through their daily logs. Field supervisors investigate any problems they observe in the data and use that analysis to initiate field reviews.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-38 Table 2.9 - Pierce Transit On-Time Performance Dashboard The results of that running time analysis influence any service changes implemented as part of the twice-yearly operator picks (and the third time during the year which is available for minor service changes)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-39 Like other interviewed transit agencies, operator hiring and availability has been a problem for Pierce Transit and has affected their performance and reliability. Recently, the agency has accelerated hiring of new operators and thus are not as dependent on the extra board for filling assignments.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-40 The TCRP A-42 interview with Kingston Transit (Ontario, Canada) was held September 20, 2017 with the following individuals: Jeremy DaCosta (Transit Manager)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-41 Figure 2.10 – Sample Performance Assessment Reliability Data Collection, Analysis and Reporting Recently, Kingston Transit began using AVL technology to monitor and measure bus pull outs. Prior to using AVL, Kingston Transit used farebox transaction data to measure reliability using a smart card system.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-42 To ensure morning pull out occurs seamlessly, Kingston Transit developed a model for tracking and monitoring this function. Within the model, Kingston Transit developed a position of cover operator, which is separate from the spare board operators.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-43 2.3.2 Manatee County Area Transit Service Area Area Population Number of Bus Routes Size of Fixed-Route Bus Fleet Annual Passenger Miles Annual Trips Annual Vehicle Revenue Miles 743 sq. miles 322,833 10 23 buses 7.2 million 1.7 million 1.4 million The TCRP A-42 interview with Manatee County Area Transit (MCAT)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-44 determine if the bus can catch up to its scheduled service. Because of the highly seasonal nature of MCAT's service area, late winter and spring are when there is a greater opportunity for congestion and heavy traffic.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-45 3.0 Case Study Summary 3.1 Reliability Program Organizational Structure In most of the interviewed transit agencies, bus transit reliability is a shared responsibility between many departments, most often including Service Planning, Operations, Performance Management, and IT departments (summarized in Table 3.1)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-46 mentioned were measures of service provision, such as missed trips, miles between road calls, etc. Agencies were less similar in their reliability goals, ranging from a low of 60 percent (NYCT and MCAT)
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-47 each month or quarter, while medium sized or smaller transit agencies might produce reports upon request or annually. Kingston has not yet developed a reliability reporting mechanism and several agencies, large and small, noted that this is an evolving process.
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Developing a Guide to Bus Transit Service Reliability Appendix C – Case Study Summary Report C-48 All the case study agencies had active coordination with local jurisdictions on-street construction projects, in identifying adequate bus detours and construction schedules to minimize impact on bus travel time and reliability. This included in some cases established committees meeting on a regular basis to discuss transit/construction coordination issues.
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