Using Archived AVL-APC Data to Improve Transit Performance and Management

Using Archived AVL-APC Data to Improve Transit Performance and Management

Author: Peter Gregory Furth

Publisher: Transportation Research Board National Research

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 83

ISBN-13: 9780309098618

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"TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 113: Using Archived AVL-APC Data to Improve Transit Performance and Management explores the effective collection and use of archived automatic vehicle location (AVL) and automatic passenger counter (APC) data to improve the performance and management of transit systems. Spreadsheet files are available on the web that provide prototype analyses of long and short passenger waiting time using AVL data and passenger crowding using APC data. Case studies on the use of AVL and APC data have previously been published as appendixes to TCRP Web-Only Document 23: Uses of Archived AVL-APC Data to Improve Transit Performance and Management: Review and Potential"--Publisher's description


Leveraging ITS Data for Transit Market Research

Leveraging ITS Data for Transit Market Research

Author: James G. Strathman

Publisher: Transportation Research Board

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 92

ISBN-13: 0309099420

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TRB¿s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 126: Leveraging ITS Data for Transit Market Research: A Practitioner¿s Guidebook examines intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and Transit ITS technologies currently in use, explores their potential to provide market research data, and presents methods for collecting and analyzing these data. The guidebook also highlights three case studies that illustrate how ITS data have been used to improve market research practices.


An Automated Quality Assurance Procedure for Archived Transit Data from APC and AVL Systems

An Automated Quality Assurance Procedure for Archived Transit Data from APC and AVL Systems

Author: Marian Saavedra

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 114

ISBN-13:

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Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and Automatic Passenger Counting (APC) systems can be powerful tools for transit agencies to archive large, detailed quantities of transit operations data. Managing data quality is an important first step for exploiting these rich datasets. This thesis presents an automated quality assurance (QA) methodology that identifies unreliable archived AVL/APC data. The approach is based on expected travel and passenger activity patterns derived from the data. It is assumed that standard passenger balancing and schedule matching algorithms are applied to the raw AVL/APC data along with any existing automatic validation programs. The proposed QA methodology is intended to provide transit agencies with a supplementary tool to manage data quality that complements, but does not replace, conventional processing routines (that can be vendor-specific and less transparent).


Using Transit AVL/APC System Data to Monitor and Imporve Schedule Adherence

Using Transit AVL/APC System Data to Monitor and Imporve Schedule Adherence

Author: Michael Mandelzys

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13:

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The implementation of automatic transit data collection via Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and Automatic Passenger Counting (APC) systems provides an opportunity to create large, detailed datasets of transit operations. These datasets are valuable because they provide an opportunity to evaluate and optimize transit operations using methods that were previously infeasible and without the need for expensive manual data collection. This thesis develops a methodology to utilize data collected by typical AVL/APC system installations in order to (a) develop advanced performance measures to quantify schedule adherence and (b) automatically determine the causes of poor schedule adherence. The methodology addresses the difficulty that many small to medium sized transit agencies have in utilizing the data being collected by proposing a methodology that can be automated, thereby reducing resource and expertise requirements and allowing the data to be more effectively utilized. The ultimate output of the proposed methodology includes the following: 1. A ranked list of routes by direction (for a given time period) that identifies routes with the poorest schedule adherence performance. 2. Performance measures within any given route, direction, and time period that identify which timepoints are contributing most to poor schedule adherence. 3. Statistics indicating identified causes of poor schedule adherence at individual timepoints. 4. A visualization aid to be used in conjunction with the cause statistics generated in Step 3 in order to develop an effective strategy for improving schedule adherence issues. With this information, transit agencies will be able to act proactively to improve their transit system, rather than wait until they discover problems on their own or hear complaints from passengers and drivers. The methodology is tested and demonstrated through application to AVL/APC system data from Grand River Transit, a public transit agency serving Waterloo Region in Ontario, Canada.


Application of Transit AVL/APC Data for Network Wide Monitoring of the Performance of Signalized Intersections

Application of Transit AVL/APC Data for Network Wide Monitoring of the Performance of Signalized Intersections

Author: Ibrahim Almohanna

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13:

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The quality of service in urban transportation networks is determined mainly by the performance of the intersections. In particular, signalized intersections play a significant role in regulating the traffic in urban transportation networks. As a result, it is essential for transportation authorities to have a system, which can locate poorly operating intersections in the network and rank them for potential improvements. In practice, intersection performance is typically evaluated through the use of models such as HCS (Highway Capacity Software) or Synchro. These models estimate measures of performance (e.g. average vehicle delay, queue length, or level of service) on the basis of determinist and/or stochastic queueing theory. Another approach is to directly estimate intersection performance on the basis of delays experienced by vehicles. One source for such data is public transit bus fleets which are equipped with automatic vehicle location (AVL) systems and automatic passenger counting (APC) systems. These systems use GPS to record where and when a bus stops and the duration of the stop. The purpose of this research was to compare the intersection performance measures produced by Synchro and those estimated from archived AVL and APC data. An empirical evaluation was conducted using 28 intersections in the Region of Waterloo. Average delay and queue length were estimated using Synchro and estimated from archived AVL/APC data. The results show that the estimation of mean delay from the two methods are highly correlated. The estimation of queue length show larger differences, and in general, Synchro underestimated the queue length when compared to the AVL/APC data.


Using Archived ITS Data to Improve Transit Performance and Management

Using Archived ITS Data to Improve Transit Performance and Management

Author: Ahmed El-Geneidy

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 54

ISBN-13:

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The widespread implementation of automated vehicle location systems and automatic passenger counters in the transit industry has opened new venues in transit operations and system monitoring. Metro Transit, the primary transit agency in the Twin Cities, Minnesota region, has been testing various intelligent transportation systems (ITS) since 1999. In 2005, they fully implemented an AVL system and partially implemented an APC system. To date, however, there has been little effort to employ such data to evaluate different aspects of performance. This research capitalizes on the availability of such data to better assess performance issues of one particular route in the Metro Transit system. We employ the archived data from the location systems of buses running on an example cross-town route to conduct a microscopic analysis to understand reasons for performance and reliability issues. We generate a series of analytical models to predict run time, schedule adherence and reliability of the transit route at two scales: the time point segment and the route level. The methodology includes multiple approaches to display ITS data within a GIS environment to allow visual identification of problem areas along routes. The methodology also uses statistical models generated at the time point segment and bus route level of analysis to demonstrate ways of identifying reliability issues and what causes them. The analytical models show that while headways are being maintained, schedule revisions are needed to in order to improve run time. Finally, the analysis suggests that many scheduled stops along this route are underutilized and recommends consolidation them.