Strategies for Improving Bus Transit Service Reliability

摘要

The objectives of the study were: (1) investigation of sources of reliability problems, (2) identification of potential service improvement strategies, (3) development of models to allow these strategies to be analyzed, and (4) evaluation of the relative effectiveness of various strategies. Four major classes of strategies for improving bus transit service reliability are analyzed, including: (1) vehicle-holding strategies, (2) reducing the number of stops made by each bus, (3) signalization improvements, and (4) provision of exclusive right-of-way. The principle findings are: (1) strategies to improve service reliability can have very substantial impacts on overall service and quality, including improvements in average wait and in-vehicle time as well; and (2) the best strategy to use in a particular situation depends upon several factors, but service frequency is the most important.