Research on Customer Requirements for Transit Service Design and Delivery

1997 ◽  
Vol 1604 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Glascock
Keyword(s):  
Service Delivery ◽  
Travel Time ◽  
Service Design ◽  
Customer Requirements ◽  
Staff Perceptions ◽  
Transit Service ◽  
Performance Requirements ◽  
Total Travel Time ◽  
Transit Agencies ◽  
Potential Customers

In the past, transit had a monopoly over service to large segments of society: one-car families or those who could not afford to drive. Now transit competes with the automobile for most consumers’ travel. To increase trip making and attract new customers in a competitive market, transit agencies must refocus from an internally driven orientation aligned with providing public service to an externally driven orientation aligned with the mission of delivering products and service that meet consumer expectations and requirements. Descriptive results of research to identify customer requirements for design and delivery of high-quality transit service are reported. Nearly 500 customers and potential customers of King County Metro Transit in Seattle, Washington, completed questionnaires designed to identify important elements and their performance requirements for each. The questionnaire was developed with intensive customer input to ensure that wording reflected customer and not staff perceptions. Requirements for service design included the following: 15-min headways for work and personal travel; no transferring to work; and total travel time to work no more than 50 percent longer than by car. Customer requirements for service delivery among elements that customers considered important included the following: the bus never leaves the stop early; seats are clean and dry; arrival time to work is no more than 5 min late; and windows are in good repair. Nonriders who were potential customers rated service delivery elements of transferring comparablity with automobile travel time as more important than did riders. Riders were more likely than nonriders to require 15-min headways for work travel.

scholarly journals Measuring when Uber behaves as a substitute or complement to transit: An examination of travel-time differences in Toronto

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mischa Young ◽  
Jeff Allen ◽  
Steven Farber
Keyword(s):  
Travel Time ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Ordinary Least Squares ◽  
Gap Filling ◽  
Service Levels ◽  
Transit Service ◽  
Logistic Regressions ◽  
Transit Agencies ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The City

Policymakers in cities worldwide are trying to determine how ride-hailing services affect the ridership of traditional forms of public transportation. The level of convenience and comfort that these services provide is bound to take riders away from transit, but by operating in areas, or at times, when transit is less frequent, they may also be filling a gap left vacant by transit operations. These contradictory effects reveal why we should not merely categorize all ride-hailing services as a substitute or supplement to transit, and demonstrate the need to examine ride-hailing trips individually. Using data from the 2016 Transportation Tomorrow Survey in Toronto, we investigate the differences in travel-times between observed ride-hailing trips and their fastest transit alternatives. Ordinary least squares and ordered logistic regressions are used to uncover the characteristics that influence travel-time differences. We find that ride-hailing trips contained within the City of Toronto, pursued during peak hours, or for shopping purposes, are more likely to have transit alternatives of similar duration. Also, we find differences in travel-time often to be caused by transfers and lengthy walk- and wait-times for transit. Our results further indicate that 31% of ride-hailing trips in our sample have transit alternatives of similar duration (≤ 15 minute difference). These are particularly damaging for transit agencies as they compete directly with services that fall within reasonable expectations of transit service levels. We also find that 27% of ride-hailing trips would take at least 30 minutes longer by transit, evidence for significant gap-filling opportunity of ride-hailing services. In light of these findings, we discuss recommendations for ride-hailing taxation structures.

Designing Limited-Stop Transit Service with Fixed Fleet Size in Peak Hours by Exploiting Transit Data

2017 ◽  
Vol 2647 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-141
Author(s):  
Xiaoling Luo ◽  
Yangsheng Jiang ◽  
Zhihong Yao ◽  
Youhua Tang ◽  
Yuan Liu
Keyword(s):  
Travel Time ◽  
Heuristic Algorithm ◽  
Travel Demand ◽  
Fleet Size ◽  
Transit Service ◽  
User Costs ◽  
Passenger Flow ◽  
Line Structure ◽  
Total Travel Time ◽  
Travel Behaviors

Efficiently designed limited-stop transit service is an attractive way to respond to high commuter travel demand in which trips concentrate on a few origin–destination pairs during peak hours. Such service is redesigned in many metropolises in China. Some research has dealt with this situation; bus fleet size was assumed to be unlimited, and the research was concerned with the average daily passenger flow rather than the specific average peak hour travel demand. In contrast to previous work, this paper presents an approach to design limited-stop transit service with the existing available fleet size from current normal service and focuses only on peak hour travel demand extracted through exploitation of transit data. First, a model for limited-stop service was proposed to minimize user costs through existing fixed fleet size. A heuristic algorithm was developed to search the transit line structure for limited-stop service instead of selecting lines from the predefined set. Next, a case in Chengdu, China, was tested. The results indicate that up to 9.32% of total travel time can be saved with the fixed fleet size when limited-stop transit service is applied. Finally, different proportions of commuter flow and different travel behaviors are discussed to illustrate the performance of limited-stop service for different scenarios.

An Integrated Servqual and Gap Model in Evaluating Customer Satisfaction in Budget Hotels in Nairobi City County, Kenya

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (II) ◽  
pp. 41-70
Author(s):  
Florence Wanjiku Njau ◽  
Mary Mutisya Mutungi ◽  
Rayvisic Mutinda
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Customer Satisfaction ◽  
Service Quality ◽  
Service Delivery ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Service Design ◽  
Moderating Effect ◽  
The Body ◽  
Gap Model ◽  
Customer Expectations

Increasingly, hotel industry has witnessed rapid growth in the 21stcentury and as a result competition within the industry has also intensified. This competition has been fueled by the preoccupation of service quality to add value and strengthen the complete guest experience. However, a major challenge facing the sector is the aspect of service quality particularly in budget hotels which target price sensitive customers. These hotels provide the customers with satisfactory core product at a reasonable price but tend to focus more on profits than on customer satisfaction. The services offered are not standardized and service quality variability is a challenge. The study used an integrated SERVQUAL and Gap model to evaluate customer satisfaction in budget hotels in Nairobi City County, Kenya. The specific objectives of the study were to determine the effect of service design on customer satisfaction, establish the effect of service delivery on customer satisfaction and determine the moderating effect of management perception of service quality on customer satisfaction in budget hotels in Nairobi City County, Kenya. The study adopted a cross sectional survey design and was conducted in 50 budget hotels. A sample size of 334 drawn from the hotel managers, customers and employees were involved in this study. Systematic random sampling technique was used to select the study sample for customers and employees. Data were collected through use of questionnaires and interviews. Both descriptive and inferential statistics was used in data analysis. The study hypotheses were tested was tested using multiple regression (ANOVA) and qualitative data from management perception was analyzed using qualitative data analysis (QCA). The regression analysis indicated that all five dimensions of service quality in service design were significant (0.000) when tested at 95% confidence level. The model was found to be significant. Correlation analysis indicated that the service design factors that had significant impact were realization of assured service in reliability (p = .044 < .05), responsiveness in informing the customers about the time of service delivery (p = .000< .05) and empathy in that operating hours are convenient to customers (p = .030 < .05). The other variables did not have significant values. The results indicate that there are gaps in the budget hotels under study between service design and customer satisfaction. Relationship between service delivery and customer satisfaction was found to be positive but not all the variables were significant. The study findings indicated that four variables; good location (p = .115 > .05), closeness to main city facilities (p = .527 > .05), someone recommended hotel (p = .665 > .05), and good experiences from the hotel (p = .458 > .05) did not have no significant values. This implied that these variables did not have an effect on customer satisfaction resulting in a gap between service delivery and customer satisfaction. This indicated that the service delivery did fully not meet customer expectations. Management perception was found to have a moderating effect between service quality and customer satisfaction. The study concluded that although managers seemed to have a reasonably good understanding of the customer and developed service designs for quality service delivery, the services delivered still fell short of customer expectations. The study therefore recommends that to enhance customer satisfaction, management needs to focus on the changing needs of their customers and develop service designs that twill offer service delivery that satisfies the customer. The study makes some contribution to the body of knowledge as an integrated model in evaluating customer satisfaction. This is an open-access article published and distributed under the terms and conditions of the  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License of United States unless otherwise stated. Access, citation and distribution of this article is allowed with full recognition of the authors and the source.

Using GTFS to Calculate Travel Time Savings Potential of Bus Preferential Treatments

2021 ◽  
pp. 036119812110092
Author(s):  
Daniel Arias ◽  
Kara Todd ◽  
Jennifer Krieger ◽  
Spencer Maddox ◽  
Pearse Haley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Travel Time ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Operating Cost ◽  
Flow Characteristics ◽  
Travel Time Savings ◽  
Bus Lane ◽  
Time Savings ◽  
Bus Network ◽  
Bus Networks ◽  
Transit Agencies

Dedicated bus lanes and other transit priority treatments are a cost-effective way to improve transit speed and reliability. However, creating a bus lane can be a contentious process; it requires justification to the public and frequently entails competition for federal grants. In addition, more complex bus networks are likely to have unknown locations where transit priority infrastructure would provide high value to riders. This analysis presents a methodology for estimating the value of bus preferential treatments for all segments of a given bus network. It calculates the passenger-weighted travel time savings potential for each inter-stop segment based on schedule padding. The input data, ridership data, and General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) trip-stop data are universally accessible to transit agencies. This study examines the 2018 Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) bus network and identifies a portion of route 39 on Buford Highway as an example candidate for a bus lane corridor. The results are used to evaluate the value of time savings to passengers, operating cost savings to the agency, and other benefits that would result from implementing bus lanes on Buford Highway. This study does not extend to estimating the cost of transit priority infrastructure or recommending locations based on traffic flow characteristics. However, it does provide a reproducible methodology to estimate the value of transit priority treatments, and it identifies locations with high value, all using data that are readily available to transit agencies. Conducting this analysis provides a foundation for beginning the planning process for transit priority infrastructure.

Estimating Express Train Preference of Urban Railway Passengers Based on Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) using Smart Card Data

2021 ◽  
pp. 036119812110133
Author(s):  
Eun Hak Lee ◽  
Kyoungtae Kim ◽  
Seung-Young Kho ◽  
Dong-Kyu Kim ◽  
Shin-Hyung Cho
Keyword(s):  
Travel Time ◽  
Smart Card ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Gradient Boosting ◽  
Log Data ◽  
Smart Card Data ◽  
Extreme Gradient Boosting ◽  
Express Train ◽  
Total Travel Time ◽  
The Individual

As the share of public transport increases, the express strategy of the urban railway is regarded as one of the solutions that allow the public transportation system to operate efficiently. It is crucial to express the urban railway’s express strategy to balance a passenger load between the two types of trains, that is, local and express trains. This research aims to estimate passengers’ preference between local and express trains based on a machine learning technique. Extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) is trained to model express train preference using smart card and train log data. The passengers are categorized into four types according to their preference for the local and express trains. The smart card data and train log data of Metro Line 9 in Seoul are combined to generate the individual trip chain alternatives for each passenger. With the dataset, the train preference is estimated by XGBoost, and Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) is used to interpret and analyze the importance of individual features. The overall F1 score of the model is estimated to be 0.982. The results of feature analysis show that the total travel time of the local train feature is found to substantially affect the probability of express train preference with a 1.871 SHAP value. As a result, the probability of the express train preference increases with longer total travel time, shorter in-vehicle time, shorter waiting time, and few transfers on the passenger’s route. The model shows notable performance in accuracy and provided an understanding of the estimation results.

scholarly journals Intelligent Ramp Control for Incident Response Using Dyna-QArchitecture

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Chao Lu ◽  
Yanan Zhao ◽  
Jianwei Gong
Keyword(s):  
Reinforcement Learning ◽  
Travel Time ◽  
Single Agent ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Model Free ◽  
Road Users ◽  
Total Travel Time ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Traffic Operation ◽  
Ramp Control

Reinforcement learning (RL) has shown great potential for motorway ramp control, especially under the congestion caused by incidents. However, existing applications limited to single-agent tasks and based onQ-learning have inherent drawbacks for dealing with coordinated ramp control problems. For solving these problems, a Dyna-Qbased multiagent reinforcement learning (MARL) system named Dyna-MARL has been developed in this paper. Dyna-Qis an extension ofQ-learning, which combines model-free and model-based methods to obtain benefits from both sides. The performance of Dyna-MARL is tested in a simulated motorway segment in the UK with the real traffic data collected from AM peak hours. The test results compared with Isolated RL and noncontrolled situations show that Dyna-MARL can achieve a superior performance on improving the traffic operation with respect to increasing total throughput, reducing total travel time and CO2emission. Moreover, with a suitable coordination strategy, Dyna-MARL can maintain a highly equitable motorway system by balancing the travel time of road users from different on-ramps.

Dynamic control cycle speed limit strategy for balanced reduction of travel time and emissions

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (09) ◽  
pp. 2150153
Author(s):  
Minghui Ma ◽  
Yaozong Zhang ◽  
Shidong Liang
Keyword(s):  
Travel Time ◽  
Traffic Control ◽  
Dynamic Control ◽  
Transmission Model ◽  
Cell Transmission Model ◽  
Vehicle Exhaust ◽  
Environmental Benefit ◽  
Multiple Control ◽  
Total Travel Time ◽  
Co Emission

The vehicle exhaust has been one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. With an increase in traffic volume, it has been found that the introduced intelligent traffic control is necessary. This paper investigated a novel VSL strategy considering the dynamic control cycle to improve the traffic efficiency and environmental benefit on freeway. An extension of the cell transmission model (CTM) was used to depict the traffic characteristics under VSL control, and integrated with the microscopic emission and fuel consumption model VT-Micro to estimate the pollution emission of each cell. The VSL strategy was designed to provide multiple control cycles with different length to adjust the scope of VSL changes, furthermore, a probability formula was developed and used to determine the optimal quantity of control cycles to reduce the computational complexity of controller. An objective optimization function was formulated with the aim of minimizing total travel time and CO emission. With simulation experiments, the results showed that the proposed VSL strategy considering the dynamic control cycle outperformed uncontrolled scenario, resulting in up to 8.4% of total travel time reductions, 26.7% of delay optimization, and 14.5% reduction in CO emission, which enhanced the service level of freeway network.

scholarly journals Design of Signal Timing Plan for Urban Signalized Networks including Left Turn Prohibition

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qinrui Tang ◽  
Bernhard Friedrich
Keyword(s):  
Travel Time ◽  
Treatment Options ◽  
User Equilibrium ◽  
Signal Timing ◽  
Stochastic User Equilibrium ◽  
Left Turn ◽  
Traffic Demand ◽  
Total Travel Time ◽  
Left Turns ◽  
Demand Patterns

Urban road networks may benefit from left turn prohibition at signalized intersections regarding capacity, for particular traffic demand patterns. The objective of this paper is to propose a method for minimizing the total travel time by prohibiting left turns at intersections. With the flows obtained from the stochastic user equilibrium model, we were able to derive the stage generation, stage sequence, cycle length, and the green durations using a stage-based method which can handle the case that stages are sharing movements. The final output is a list of the prohibited left turns in the network and a new signal timing plan for every intersection. The optimal list of prohibited left turns was found using a genetic algorithm, and a combination of several algorithms was employed for the signal timing plan. The results show that left turn prohibition may lead to travel time reduction. Therefore, when designing a signal timing plan, left turn prohibition should be considered on a par with other left turn treatment options.

scholarly journals PENENTUAN LOKASI TOWER CRANE PADA PROYEK KONSTRUKSI BERBASIS SIMULASI

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 1305
Author(s):  
Gerwyn Persulessy ◽  
Basuki Anondho
Keyword(s):  
Travel Time ◽  
Construction Projects ◽  
Tower Crane ◽  
Location Determination ◽  
Heavy Equipment ◽  
Total Travel Time ◽  
Speed Up ◽  
High Level ◽  
Map Data ◽  
Geometric Layout

Development of high-level building construction projects that require complex equipment that can be used in high-level construction, equipment used to help complete construction projects called heavy equipment. One of the heavy equipment used in high-rise buildings is a tower crane. The use and layout of tower cranes can speed up the schedule and save on project costs. Therefore many methods have been developed to determine the tower crane layout. This study will discuss determining the location of tower cranes by discussing simulations. The location will be determined based on the site map data which is processed in the form of a geometric arrangement and tower crane data specifications. Location determination is done by comparing the total travel time of several simulated locations according to several different speed criteria in a construction project. Speed criteria are divided into four times the jib speed and trolley speed. Location of the location with the total travel time will be taken as the final result. Different speed criteria will make the total travel time change. ABSTRAKPerkembangan proyek pembangunan gedung bertingkat tinggi yang semakin kompleks menyebabkan diperlukannya peralatan yang dapat mempermudah pembangunan gedung bertingkat, peralatan yang digunakan untuk membantu menyelesaikan tugas konstruksi disebut alat berat. Salah satu peralatan berat yang digunakan pada gedung bertingkat tinggi adalah tower crane. Penggunaan dan tata letak tower crane yang baik dapat mempercepat jadwal dan menghemat biaya proyek. Oleh karena itu banyak dikembangkan metode-metode untuk menentukan tata letak tower crane. Penelitian ini akan membahas penetapan letak lokasi tower crane dengan pendekatan  simulasi. Letak lokasi akan ditetapkan berdasarkan data site map yang diolah dalam bentuk geometric layout dan data spesifikasi tower crane. Penetapan lokasi dilakukan dengan cara membandingkan total travel time dari beberapa lokasi yang disimulasi sesuai dengan beberapa kriteria kecepatan yang berbeda-beda pada suatu proyek konstruksi. Kriteria kecepatan terbagi menjadi empat berdasarkan besarnya kecepatan jib dan kecepatan trolley. Letak lokasi dengan total travel time terkecil akan diambil sebagai hasil akhir. Kriteria-kriteria kecepatan yang berbeda disimulasi akan membuat total travel time berubah.

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