The Farside Story

Abstract

Determining the proper location of bus stops is an important planning decision in the transit planning field. While previous efforts in the literature have suggested several advantages and disadvantages of certain bus stop placements, there has been little effort toward understanding the impacts of bus stop location on the transit system performance at the stop level of analysis. This paper evaluates the impact of bus stop location on bus stop time and stop time variation. The paper uses stop level data collected from the Société de Transport de Montréal's automatic vehicle location and automatic passenger counting systems in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The study findings show that stop times occurring on the nearside of intersections are on average 4.2 to 5.0 s slower than stop times occurring on the farside of intersections, with no impact on stop time variation. A validation model was used to confirm the impacts of bus stop placements on stop time with data from TriMet's automated bus dispatch system in Portland, Oregon. This study offers transit planners and policy makers a better understanding of the effects of bus stop location on stop time and its variation to improve service quality while minimizing service variation at the stop level.