Application of Public Transit AVL Data for Evaluation of Delay Variability

Abstract

The travel time is the significant factor in evaluating efficiency and performance of public transit system. A greater percentage of travel time is accounted by bus stop delays which depends on passenger count, bus stop characteristics, traffic condition, bus performance, etc. Many of the Indian transit agencies store the passenger details stage wise not stop wise, which makes it difficult to evaluate delay variability at bus stop level. In this connection, Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) data from Intelligent Transport System (ITS) implemented at Mysore, India is considered for evaluating bus stop delay variability. The collected data is used for estimating delay at five stops by adopting trajectory-based formulation. The probability distributions have been utilized to model the variability in delay. The performance has been analysed using Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test. The daily variability of delay at bus stops has been evaluated using Coefficient of Variation (COV). The results of the performance evaluation of delay distributions show that the Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution is the best descriptor of the delay variability in terms of accuracy, robustness, and survival capacity. In the absence of passenger data collection systems, method of evaluation of delay using AVL data presented in this study is helpful.