Hickman and Wilson – PASSENGER TRAVEL TIME AND PATH CHOICE IMPLICATIONS OF REAL-TIME TRANSIT INFORMATION (abstract) 1995

Description

Hickman and Wilson develop an analytic framework to assess real-time transit information that projects vehicle travel times and may influence passenger path choice. They present a behavioral model framing path choice as a boarding decision, explicitly incorporating stochastic and time-dependent network travel times—features neglected in prior work but crucial for evaluating real-time systems. The model shows how passengers can use real-time projections when deciding whether to board a departing vehicle. The framework is applied to a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority corridor using computer simulation of vehicle movements and passenger choices. Simulation results indicate that real-time information produces only modest improvements in service measures, including origin-to-destination travel times and trip-time variability. The authors conclude that the quantitative benefits of providing real-time information for transit path choice are limited and potentially questionable, suggesting careful consideration before widespread deployment.