Analyzing Travel Time Variability on Transit Route Using GPS Data

Travel time variability has been considered as an important quantitative measure of bus service reliability. It deteriorates reliability by increasing in-vehicle travel time and passenger waiting time. Less attention has been paid to it due to the lack of reliable data. The problem is being addressed by the use of advanced public transport systems. The paper mainly used the GPS data to explore the form and the extent of travel time variability at different times of the day. The process of data cleaning was built for the characteristics of bus GPS data in Chengdu. The appropriate measures of travel time variability based on the travel time distributions were adopted by the study to make the best use of the abounding data. At last, the paper briefly discussed the factors which might affect the travel time and proposed aims for the further research.