Evaluation of Bus Stops’ Impacts on Passengers’ Walking Time

Abstract

This paper researches the impacts of bus stops on passengers’ walking time. Walking time is classified as additional walking time, access time and egress time. A subsequent bus has to stop upstream of a bus stop when there is no berth available. Passengers waiting on the platforms prefer walking to the stopped bus, which leads to additional walking time. The locations of bus stops can impact passengers’ access and egress time significantly. In order to evaluate the impacts of bus stops on passengers’ walking time, this paper formulates additional walking time based on theory of queueing and probability. Data from public transit OD survey in a real transit corridor of Zhengzhou City in China is analyzed to identify the relationship between bus stop locations and passengers’ access and egress time. Additional walking time increases on a large scale when the number of berths at a bus stop exceeds the threshold of three. Bus arrival rate and dwell time significantly affect the additional walking time by platform. The proposed analysis also shows that the access and egress time is sensitive to locations of bus stops, and arranging bus stops based on equilibrium distribution of passenger miles can significantly reduce the access and egress time.