Developing a Bus Service Reliability Evaluation and

Visualization Framework Using Archived AVL/APC Data

Wei Feng

Dr. Miguel Figliozzi

Portland State University

6/27/2012

1

Outline

• Background

• Motivation

• Objective

• Data description and route configuration

• Performance measures and visualization examples

• Summary

• Future work

2

Background

• PORTAL (Portland Oregon Regional Transportation Archive Listing) it is a multi-modal transportation data archive and web-based visualization system.

• Transit data are complicated and difficult to manipulate and have not been incorporated into Portal yet.

• TriMet is going to upgrade the existing bus dispatching system with higher resolution AVL data.

3

• Service reliability is important for both transit agencies and passengers

• Under utilization of large amount of (Automatic vehicle location) AVL and (Automatic passenger counter) APC data

• Reduce research overlap

Motivation

4

• Develop a bus service reliability evaluation and visualization framework that can convert large amount of AVL, APC data into valuable information and performance measures with visual aids

Objective

5

Performance measures

• Aggregated (certain time of day over multiple days) identify recurrent problems

• Disaggregated operational records (specific date and time of day) examine more detail information

6

Route configuration

7

WB

F

E

D

B

C

A

Leve

l of

Ser

vice

Sca

le

On-time performance (WB)

Hou

rs

1

0.95

0.9

0.85

0.8

0.75

0.7

0.65

0.6

0.55

0.55

Aggregated

8

Schedule adherence between 11am and 12am (WB)

On – time thresholdmedian

25% quartile

75% quartile

Sample maximum

Sample minimum

Outliers+

Act

ual–

sch

edul

e de

part

ure

time

(sec

onds

)

Schedule deviations between 11am and 12 pm (WB)

West

Aggregated

9

headway frequency AM peak hours (WB)

Fre

quen

cy

West

Aggregated

10

West

Series1

-30%

-25%

-20%

-15%

-10%

-5%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%Bus bunching formation and dissipation (WB am peak)

Finally recoveredFirst bunched

Aggregated

11

0

1

2

3

4

5

6average passenger waiting time spatial distribution (Westbound am peak hours)

SW

Mo

rris

on

& 1

7th

SW

Wa

shin

gto

n &

5th

SE

Mo

rris

on

& 1

2th

SE

Be

lmo

nt &

39

th

SE

Be

lmo

nt &

60

th

SE

Sta

rk &

82

nd

SE

Sta

rk &

93

rd

ave

rag

e w

aiti

ng

tim

e (

min

ute

s)

leading bus avg waiting timefollowing bus avg waiting timenormal bus avg waiting timebunching bus avg waiting time

West

Aggregated

12

06:30 07:00 07:30 08:00 08:30 09:00 09:30

Gateway Transit Center / 0

SE Stark & 93nd / 2.7

SE Stark & 82nd / 3.3

SE Belmont & 60th / 4.6

SE Belmont & 39th / 5.6

SE Morrison & 12th / 7.2

SW Washington & 5th / 8.3

SW Morrison & 17th / 9.1

NW 23rd & Lovejoy / 10.0

Time points / distance (miles)time space diagram on16-Sep-2009 between 06:30 and 09:30 (Route 15 Westbound)

10501060107010801090110011101120113011401150116011701180119012001210122012301240125012601270128012901300131013201330134013501360137013801390

West

Time space diagram

Disaggregated

13

Dynamic visualization

Disaggregated

14

Summary

15

• Route level bus service reliability evaluation and visualization are helpful to transit agencies

• Aggregated reliability performance measures are helpful for recurrent problems

• Disaggregated performance visualization can help understand particular causes

• Integrate all these performance measures and visual aids with Portlal

• Extend the same algorithm to all other routes in TriMet

• Upgrade with new TriMet Bus dispatching system data

Future work

16

• Steve Callas and David Court (TriMet)

• OTREC (Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium)

• Eric Albright, Scott Price (ITS Lab at PSU)

Acknowledgement

17

Route 9 dynamic visualization: http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~eea/trimetViz/tspviz.phpPortal official: http://portal.its.pdx.edu/home/Portal demo: http://demo.portal.its.pdx.edu/Portal/index.php/pedbikeTriMet: http://ride.trimet.org/?tool=routes

Wei FengEmail: wfeng@pdx.eduWebsite: http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~wfeng/

Dr. Miguel FigliozziEmail: figliozzi@pdx.eduWebsite: http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~maf/

Thank you

Questions?

20

Data description

Date Leave_time Train Stop

_timeArrive_time Dwell Stop_id Door Lift ons offs Load Mileage

9/14/2009 21150 1501 21120 21136 0 8989 0 0 0 0 2 8.19/14/2009 21216 1501 21194 21182 10 7162 1 0 2 0 4 8.39/14/2009 21262 1501 21248 21238 7 8963 1 0 2 1 5 8.59/14/2009 21294 1501 21286 21278 0 7174 0 0 0 0 5 8.69/14/2009 21344 1501 21327 21320 6 718 2 0 1 0 6 8.79/14/2009 21384 1501 21373 21360 0 749 0 0 0 0 6 8.89/14/2009 21430 1501 21407 21394 5 8511 1 0 1 0 8 8.99/14/2009 21496 1501 21480 21472 8 6911 2 0 0 1 7 9.19/14/2009 21590 1501 21575 21582 0 5016 0 0 0 0 7 9.39/14/2009 21636 1501 21611 21602 0 5014 0 0 0 0 7 9.4… … … … … … … … … … … … …

6