Measuring, Predicting and Controlling Disruption Impacts for Urban Public Transport

Abstract

Public transport systems can be subject to disruptions, which have negative impacts on passengers. Disruptions can result in additional in-vehicle time, waiting time, transfer time and extra transfers for passengers. In addition, perceived journey times might increase due to higher crowding levels on public transport services. Public transport disruptions can also result in revenue losses, rescheduling costs, reimbursement costs and fines for the public transport service provider. Although it is thus important to reduce the impact of public transport disruptions, it is particularly challenging to foresee and study disruptions due to their uncertainty and variety. They occur in an environment with complex interactions between decisions made by both passengers and public transport service provider in response to these disruptions, surrounded by various sources of uncertainty in relation to disruption type, location and duration. In this research, we propose a generic, stepwise approach to reduce the passenger impacts of disruptions:
Step 1: Measure current disruption impacts.
Step 2: Predict future disruptions frequencies and impacts.
Step 3: Develop and evaluate measures aimed to control these disruption impacts.