Service Reliability Analysis of High Frequency Transit Using Stochastic Simulation

Abstract

Aiming at decreasing average passenger waiting time at stops, time headway adherence is used to analyze and measure the route-level transit service reliability in terms of high frequency bus route services. Considering the influence of passenger demand fluctuation and the stochastic nature of running time on road segments on transit service reliability, a fixed high frequency bus route was set to be the example route. The stochastic simulation method was used to analogy the process of its bus services, time headway variation, and average passenger waiting time at stops under different passenger demand and running time fluctuation. The results show that bigger running time fluctuation and more uneven passenger arrival lead to higher headway variation and longer average passenger waiting time at stops; the accumulative headway variation tends to be higher which causes worse service reliability at stops downstream.