Modeling Variations in Bus Schedule Adherence at the Stop Level on an Urban Arterial Road
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 140, Issue 7
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to assess the adherence of buses to their schedules when they are operating in specific conditions made by separating buses from fast general traffic by median islands, but still sharing curbside lanes with slow traffic (e.g., cars and motorcycles) on an urban arterial road with heavy traffic in Taiwan. This study uses real-time traffic data (e.g., travel time, speed, and traffic volume) collected for a 3-month period in 2010 from buses equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) and inductive loop vehicle detectors buried under the road. The ordered probit and multinomial logit models are applied to examine variables contributing to trip time between two adjacent stops being later than the scheduled trip time during different time periods of the day. The findings indicate that variables significantly influence variations in adherence to schedule, including buses operating in mixed-traffic curbside lanes, the number of bus routes passing through a stop, bus dwell time at a stop, bus headway, traffic volume, the number of intersections without traffic signals, spacing of bus stops with fewer than 300 m between them in densely populated areas, and rainy weather.
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for valuable suggestions in improving the quality of the paper. The author would also like to thank Sung, Ching-Ping for her assistance in data collection.
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© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 21, 2013
Accepted: Mar 17, 2014
Published online: Apr 23, 2014
Published in print: Jul 1, 2014
Discussion open until: Sep 23, 2014
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