Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Estimating Reliability Indices And Confidence Intervals For Transit And Traffic At The Corridor Level, Travis B. Glick

PSU Transportation Seminars

As congestion worsens, the importance of rigorous methodologies to estimate travel-time reliability increases. Exploiting fine-granularity transit GPS data, this research proposes a novel method to estimate travel-time percentiles and confidence intervals. Novel transit reliability measures based on travel-time percentiles are proposed to identify and rank low-performance hotspots; the proposed reliability measures can be utilized to distinguish peak-hour low performance from whole-day low performance. As a case study, the methodology is applied to a bus transit corridor in Portland, Oregon. Time-space speed profiles, heatmaps, and visualizations are employed to highlight sections and intersections with high travel-time variability and transit low performance. …

Evaluating The Planning And Implementation Of Major Transit Capital Projects In The Portland Region, Joseph Recker

PSU Transportation Seminars

The Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) discretionary New Starts program is the federal government's largest discretionary funding program. From heavy to light rail, from commuter rail to bus rapid transit systems, the FTA's New Starts program has helped to make possible hundreds of new or extended transit fixed guideway systems across the country, including most of TriMet’s light rail extensions and WES commuter rail. Beginning in 2001, FTA has required project sponsors to prepare a Before and After Study report on the effectiveness of planning and implementation of New Starts and Small Starts projects. The studies focus on five transit characteristics …

How Livable Is Your Transit System?, Marc Schlossberg

TREC Project Briefs

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has identified some “livability principles” which include healthy, safe and walkable neighborhoods and safe, reliable and economical transportation choices. Transit agencies and local governments routinely use metrics to evaluate the performance of transit systems, but a uniform standard of transit data collection does not exist outside of the reporting requirements of the National Transit Database (NTD). Because of the types of data collected for the NTD, the focus of performance measurements is often on ridership and financial performance, leaving aside the question of livability.

In an OTREC-sponsored project, principal investigator Marc Schlossberg …

Measuring The Performance Of Transit Relative To Livability, Marc Schlossberg, Jennifer Dill, Liang Ma, Cody Meyer

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

This project sought to understand the relationship between urban form, transit service characteristics, and ridership measured at the stop level. Most previous work in this area has looked at these issues separately, by either linking system performance (e.g. on-time performance, cost, etc.) to ridership or exploring the connection between urban form (e.g. density) and transit use. This project synthesized these disparate approaches. While transit service characteristics (e.g. frequency, travel time, etc.) are important to help individuals reach their desired destinations, most transit users are pedestrians at the beginning and end of any transit trip. Therefore, focusing on the walkable zone …

Analysis Of Transit Signal Priority Using Archived Trimet Bus Dispatch System Data, Thomas J. Kimpel, James G. Strathman, Robert L. Bertini, Steve Callas

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper presents findings on changes in bus running times, on-time performance, and excess passenger wait times following implementation of transit signal priority in select bus corridors in the Portland metropolitan region. Analysis of the effectiveness of transit signal priority is often undertaken using simulation techniques or empirical studies that are either limited in scope and/or data availability. The present research uses an abundance of trip-level data collected from TriMet’s Bus Dispatch System. The study focuses on the most common performance measures of interest to both transit operators and passengers. Our study shows that the expected benefits of TSP are …

Headway Deviation Effects On Bus Passenger Loads: Analysis Of Tri-Met’S Archived Avl-Apc Data, James G. Strathman, Thomas J. Kimpel, Steve Callas

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

In this paper we empirically analyze the relationship between transit service headway deviations and passenger loads, using archived data from Tri-Met’s automatic vehicle location and automatic passenger counter systems. The analysis employs two-stage least squares estimation to account for the simultaneous relationship between headway deviations and loads. Controlling for the effects of passenger activity on delay, the results indicate that the observed incidence of excess passenger loads is systematically attributable to deviations from scheduled headways. In turn, analysis of the causes of headway deviations served to identify possible operations control actions that would improve service regularity and, consequently, reduce incidences …

Tri-Met's Experience With Automatic Passenger Counter And Automatic Vehicle Location Systems, James G. Strathman

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

The Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (Tri-Met) is one of about 30 metropolitan transit agencies that have deployed both automatic vehicle location (AVL) and automatic passenger counter (APC) systems (Casey, 1999). These technologies are important components of the agency’s new automated bus dispatching system (BDS). The AVL and APC systems at Tri-Met recover comprehensive operations and passenger activity data at the bus stop level that is archived for later analysis. The agency has gained a reputation as an industry leader in the areas of data archiving and the application of archived data to performance monitoring and analysis.

Prior to …

Analysis Of Transit Fare Evasion In The Rose Quarter, Shimon Isreal, James G. Strathman

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Tri-Met collected fare evasion data for buses and MAX trains passing outbound through the Rose Quarter Monday, June 11 through Saturday, July 7. Beginning September 2001, Tri-Met’s “Fareless Square’s” free zone was extended towards the Lloyd District, with an eastern boundary of NE 14th. Prior to this, all trips between the Central Business District and Lloyd Center required a full Zone 1 fare.

Development Of A Statistical Algorithm For The Real-Time Prediction Of Transit Vehicle Arrival Times Under Adverse Conditions, Kenneth Dueker, Thomas J. Kimpel, James G. Strathman

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Prior TransNow funded research by Portland State University (PSU) and the University of Washington (UW) in cooperation with Tri-Met, the transit provider for the Portland metropolitan area, has utilized a rich set of archived data from the Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL)-based Bus Dispatch System (BDS). Tri-Met is one of the few transit agencies that archive AVL data for analysis and research.

Evaluation Of Transit Operations: Data Applications Of Tri-Met’S Automated Bus Dispatching System, James G. Strathman, Thomas J. Kimpel, Kenneth Dueker, Rick Gerhart, Steve Callas

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Over the past decade, the adoption of Advanced Public Transportation System (APTS) technology has been motivated by transit providers’ desire to improve service reliability as well as to identify potential savings from improvements in scheduling and service planning. Casey (2000) reports that Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) systems, a cornerstone of APTS, have been deployed by 61 transit agencies as of 1998.

Bus Transit Operations Control: Review And An Experiment Involving Tri-Met’S Automated Bus Dispatching System, James G. Strathman, Thomas J. Kimpel, Kenneth Dueker

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

An operations plan contains information on the provision of transit service, including intended service levels, vehicle availability, and driver schedules. Agency resources would be utilized efficiently if the operations plan could be executed without disruptions in service. When service disruptions occur, the aim of operations control is to optimize system performance given the current state of the system (Wilson et al., 1992). This typically involves actions intended to either return service to schedule or restore headways separating vehicles. Disruptions in service impose costs on transit providers in the form of reduced productivity and on passengers in the form of increased …

Service Reliability Impacts Of Computer-Aided Dispatching And Automatic Vehicle Location Technology: A Tri-Met Case Study, James G. Strathman, Kenneth Dueker, Thomas J. Kimpel, Rick Gerhart, Ken Turner, Pete Turner, Steve Callas, David Griffin

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper presents findings on initial changes in service reliability following Tri-Met’s deployment of a new bus dispatching system using automatic vehicle location and automatic passenger counter technology. Changes in on-time performance, headway variation, run time variation, and run times were determined with respect to pre-deployment levels. Changes in headway variation and run times were also used to estimate the initial benefits of the new system with respect to operating costs, passenger waiting, and passenger travel time.

Automated Bus Dispatching, Operations Control, And Service Reliability: The Initial Tri-Met Experience, James G. Strathman, Kenneth Dueker, Thomas J. Kimpel, Rick Gerhart, Ken Turner, Pete Taylor, Steve Callas, David Griffin

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper presents findings on initial changes in service reliability following Tri-Met’s deployment of a new bus dispatching system using automatic vehicle location and automatic passenger counter technology. Changes in on-time performance, headway variation, run time variation, and run times were determined with respect to pre-deployment levels. Changes in headway variation and run times were also used to estimate the initial benefits of the new system with respect to operating costs, passenger waiting, and passenger travel time.

Issues In The Design Of A Stop-Level Transit Patronage Model, James G. Strathman, Kenneth Dueker, Zhongren Peng

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Tri-Met, the transit agency serving the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area is implementing a new bus dispatching system (BDS) that includes automated vehicle location (AVL) technology. An important objective in the agency's decision to invest in a new dispatching system was to maintain or improve service reliability in an urban environment characterized by rapid growth and worsening traffic congestion.

An Evaluation Of Automatic Passenger Counters: Validation, Sampling, And Statistical Inference, James G. Strathman

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

While automatic passenger counters (APC's) offer the potential for cait effective data recovery and management, they also introduce new complications in the data recovery process. This report addresses three issues associated with the implementation of APC's, based on an evaluation of the recent experiences of the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (Tri-Met). First is the issue of validation, which is concerned with both the recovery and accuracy of APC passenger data. The second issue concerns the development of a sampling methodology for APC's compatible with UMTA's Section 15 reporting requirements. Third is the issue of inferring system-level ridership from …

Economic Effects Of Tri-Met's Operating And Capital Expenditures Fy 1983 On The Portland Metropolitan Economy, James G. Strathman, Rishinath L. Rao

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

A summary of the transit-related benefits and an assessment of the economic effects of Tri-Met's operating and capital expenditures was performed. The economic effects of the agency's expenditures were derived using a 24-sector input-output model of the four county Portland SMSA economy. Input output analysis is frequently used for the purpose of impact assessment because it provides exceptionally detailed estimates of interindustry activity, employment and income that result from agency/project related expenditures. The primary data and background information needed to perform this analysis were provided by the Tri-Met Transit Planning and Development Office.