scholarly journals Understanding the Transit Market: A Persona-Based Approach for Preferences Quantification

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 3863 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gamal Eldeeb ◽  
Moataz Mohamed

The study aims at utilizing a persona-based approach in understanding, and further quantifying, the preferences of the key transit market groups and estimating their willingness to pay (WTP) for service improvements. The study adopted an Error Component (EC) interaction choice model to investigate personas’ preferences in a bus service desired quality choice experiment. Seven personas were developed based on four primary characteristics: travel behaviour, employment status, geographical distribution, and Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC). The study utilized a dataset of 5238 participants elicited from the Hamilton Street Railway Public Engagement Survey, Ontario, Canada. The results show that all personas, albeit significantly different in magnitude, are negatively affected by longer journey times, higher trip fares, longer service headways, while positively affected by reducing the number of transfers per trip and real-time information provision. The WTP estimates show that, in general, potential users are more likely to have higher WTP values compared to current users except for at-stop real-time information provision. Also, there is no consensus within current users nor potential users on the WTP estimates for service improvements. Finally, shared and unique preferences for service attributes among personas were identified to help transit agencies tailor their marketing/improvement plans based on the targeted segments.

Author(s):  
Jeffrey J. LaMondia ◽  
Travis Gajkowski ◽  
Veronica Ramirez

This research seeks to understand the factors affecting who, in small and medium-sized communities, would adopt real-time information (RTI) technology when using paratransit services. It further provides a planning performance measure that can identify areas which would benefit most from the introduction of such RTI technology. These goals are addressed by modeling paratransit riders’ likelihood of adopting RTI technology as well as forecasting communities’ likely adoption using on-board passenger survey data collected in two small- and medium-sized communities in Alabama and Georgia. Overall, the estimation parameters highlight that future generations of paratransit patrons who are familiar with general technology and use paratransit for non-routine trips would be most interested in and gain the most benefit from this RTI technology. The performance measure is also most effective in long-term transportation planning, applied to future older populations (currently 45–55 years old) who are more comfortable using technology. Transit agencies will be able to use this information to determine whether RTI would be appropriate for their communities as well as the populations that should be targeted for this introduction prior to undertaking a large study or infrastructure investment.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiya Chen ◽  
Chunhua Yang ◽  
Fenling Feng ◽  
Zhiya Chen

This paper presents an improved model for improving headway-based bus route service reliability at bus stops using real-time preventive operation control, taking into account dynamic interaction among random passenger demand, stochastic driving conditions of route segments, and vehicle load capacity constraint. In this model, the real-time information of passenger demand and vehicle operation is involved to predict the imminent unacceptable headway deviation, in the case of which some in-time preventive control strategies are deployed according to the given control rules. As a case study, a single fixed bus route with high-frequency services was simulated and different scenarios of real-time preventive operation control were performed. Headway adherence and average passenger wait time were used to measure bus service reliability. The results show that the improved model is closer to the real bus route service, and using real-time information to predict potential service unreliability and trigger in-time preventive control can reduce bus bunching and avoid big gap.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nader Azizi

In most major cities, levels of traffic congestion are rising along with their associated problems such as travel delays and pollution. While any increase in public transit rider-ship could reduce the level of traffic congestion and related costs, most transit agencies are not able to expand their existing services because of fiscal• and physical constraints. As a result, a growing interest has been developing recently to maximize the transit system efficiency and productivity using new emerging technologies. Recently, the emergence of new technologies such as automatic vehicle location (AVL) and global positioning systems (GPS) has facilitated the design of computer-based real-time decision support systems for public transits. These technologies could significantly help transit agencies improve their operations monitoring and control. In the context of public transit systems, operations monitoring refers to real-time service performance measure and problems detection, and control refers to implementing real time control actions to remedy those problems. This thesis presents a new approach for operations monitoring and control in public transit systems with real-time information. First, an integrated model that combines both headway-based and schedule-based services is presented. To measure the headway or schedule adherence, the model uses predicted arrival times of vehicles at downstream stops. This feature allows the operational managers to avoid major service interruptions by proactively taking necessary corrective actions. Transit agencies have used and continue to use real-time control strategies to improve quality of their services. These strategies are employed by inspectors at various points along a route to remedy the problems as they occur. Practice shows that it is difficult to apply such strategies effectively without real-time information. In the second part of this thesis, a mathematical model for holding control strategy with real-time information is described. The proposed model aims at minimization of the total passengers waiting time and considers both cases of overcrowded and underutilized services. Due to complexity of the holding problem, several metaheuristics are proposed and tested. Among all intelligent search algorithms, a new version of simulated annealing algorithm is proposed to solve the real-time holding control model.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nader Azizi

In most major cities, levels of traffic congestion are rising along with their associated problems such as travel delays and pollution. While any increase in public transit rider-ship could reduce the level of traffic congestion and related costs, most transit agencies are not able to expand their existing services because of fiscal• and physical constraints. As a result, a growing interest has been developing recently to maximize the transit system efficiency and productivity using new emerging technologies. Recently, the emergence of new technologies such as automatic vehicle location (AVL) and global positioning systems (GPS) has facilitated the design of computer-based real-time decision support systems for public transits. These technologies could significantly help transit agencies improve their operations monitoring and control. In the context of public transit systems, operations monitoring refers to real-time service performance measure and problems detection, and control refers to implementing real time control actions to remedy those problems. This thesis presents a new approach for operations monitoring and control in public transit systems with real-time information. First, an integrated model that combines both headway-based and schedule-based services is presented. To measure the headway or schedule adherence, the model uses predicted arrival times of vehicles at downstream stops. This feature allows the operational managers to avoid major service interruptions by proactively taking necessary corrective actions. Transit agencies have used and continue to use real-time control strategies to improve quality of their services. These strategies are employed by inspectors at various points along a route to remedy the problems as they occur. Practice shows that it is difficult to apply such strategies effectively without real-time information. In the second part of this thesis, a mathematical model for holding control strategy with real-time information is described. The proposed model aims at minimization of the total passengers waiting time and considers both cases of overcrowded and underutilized services. Due to complexity of the holding problem, several metaheuristics are proposed and tested. Among all intelligent search algorithms, a new version of simulated annealing algorithm is proposed to solve the real-time holding control model.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 2677-2689 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Pronello ◽  
José Pedro Ramalho Veiga Simão ◽  
Valentina Rappazzo

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