Travel Time Reliability Measures Accommodating Scheduling Preferences of Travelers

Abstract

Existing travel time reliability measures fail to accommodate scheduling preferences of travelers and cannot distinguish between the variability associated with early and late arrivals. This study introduces two new travel time reliability measures based on concepts from behavioral economics. The first proposed measure is an indicator of the width of travel time distribution. It considers scheduling preferences of travelers and can distinguish between early arrival and late arrival. The second measure determines the skewness of travel time distribution. To estimate the proposed measures, travel time is modeled by mixture models and closed-form expressions are derived for the expected values of early and late arrivals. In addition, real travel time data from a freeway segment is used to compare the proposed measures with the existing travel time reliability measures. The results suggest that, although there exist significant correlations between travel time reliability measures, travelers’ preferences have considerable effects on the travel time reliability as perceived by them. Furthermore, four measures are developed based on the notions of early and late arrivals to assess the on-time performance (schedule adherence) of transit vehicles at stop level. The results of this study show that the four measures can serve as complementary to the existing on-time performance indices.