International Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems Research

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13177-019-00195-0

A Review of Service Reliability Measures for Public

Transportation Systems
Ankit Kathuria 1 & Manoranjan Parida 2 & Ch. Ravi Sekhar 3

Received: 12 July 2019 / Accepted: 12 July 2019

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019

Abstract
The aim of this paper is to review various public transport reliability measures including the factors responsible for causing
variability in the travel time. A four quadrant approach is used to summarize various reliability measures. These indicators use
both Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) data and the stated preference data to measure reliability. Further various supply and
demand side factors causing uncertainties in travel time are listed and discussed. In the end a brief case study on two routes of Bus
Rapid Transit System(BRTS) of Ahmedabad is reported to apply and test the reviewed travel time measures on the ITS data.

Keywords Travel time reliability . Public transportation . Reliability measures

1 Introduction regularity etc. These factors can result in increased operating

The value of time spend in travelling is increasing day by day
due to increasing economic activities. Therefore, reliability in
both road and public transportation (PT) systems is becoming
an important service feature for passengers, operators and
community. A common definition of reliability in terms of
public transportation system is one minus probability of fail-
ure [1]. PT Reliability parameters that are of concern to pas-
sengers are waiting time, boarding time, alighting time, seat
availability, in vehicle time, total travel time, transfer time,
missed connections, adherence to pre-trip information time
etc. [1, 2]. Operators are concerned with reliability in terms
of factors like frequency of break downs, total ridership, in-
terference of transits units with other vehicle, headway
* Ankit Kathuria
writetokathuria@gmail.com
Manoranjan Parida
mparida@gmail.com
Ch. Ravi Sekhar
chalumuri.ravisekhar@gmail.com
1
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology
Jammu (IIT-JMU), Jammu 181221, India
2
Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Rookree, Indian Institute of
Technology Roorkee, Roorkee 247667, India
3
Transport Planning Division, CSIR-CRRI New Delhi, CSIR-Central
Road Research Institute, New Delhi, India
cost. On the other hand community is concerned with transit
reliability in emergencies like inclement weather and civil
disorder etc. [1]. Hence on day to day basis reliability majorly
affects the passengers and the operators. Therefore, the prior
studies on TTR are divided majorly into two parts i.e. passen-
gers and agencies/operator’s perspective, illustrated in Fig. 1.
The factors influencing passenger’s perception of the service
will affect the satisfaction scale whereas factors influencing
agencies perspective will affect the service delivery scale.
Hence it can be observed from Fig. 1 that a trade-off needs
to be maintained between satisfaction scale and service deliv-
ery scale for any public transit system. Reliability of the PT
system also plays a very important role in mode choice of the
passengers [3].
PT reliability measurement has always been a challenge for
different stakeholders. It is very important to measure reliabil-
ity to estimate the change in demand with respect to change in
performance and for penalizing /rewarding operators for a
good or a bad PT service [4]. Researchers have developed
various measures of reliability both based on theoretical and
empirical platform. This study intent to review and summarize
various passenger and operator oriented reliability measures
for public transportation systems available till date. Further
various demand and supply side factors affecting reliability
of a system are summarized. A brief case study for a corridor
of Ahmedabad BRTS is presented in the last to demonstrate
the effect of supply factors on the reliability of the system.
Also ITS data based reliability measures are applied on two
routes of Ahmedabad and then compared.
 Int. J. ITS Res.

Fig. 1 Passengers and Agencies Service

Sasfacon
perspective on Travel Time Delivery
Scale
Reliability Scale

High High

Travel Average

Percepon
Time Performance
Passengers
Waing Agencies
Using Indicators

Actual Service
Time
WDI, PTI, BTI or
headway adherence
Low Low

2 Measuring Reliability of Public
Transportation Systems
Figure 2 demonstrates four quadrants showing reliability mea-
sures based on ITS, user perception and passenger waiting time
data. Quadrant 1 illustrates headway regularity measures. In
total five measures have been listed in this quadrant. The second
quadrant contains waiting time based reliability measures. Total
6 measures are listed here, out of these most of them are based
on stated preference (SP) survey techniques. Using SP tech-
nique, utility based models were developed as reported in vari-
ous literature [5–10] The third quadrant contains transfer time
reliability measure on which a limited research has been done till
date, as of now only three measures based on transfer waiting
time estimation were available in literature [2]. The quadrant
four contains the most important reliability measures i.e. the
travel time reliability (TTR) measure. In total ten statistical range
parameters are listed in the TTR quadrant. These measures are
based upon the travel time distribution characteristics. Both re-
liability and variability of travel time can be estimated using
various measures as listed. The details of all the measures and
their application by various researchers and transport authorities
are studied in next sections.
3 Reliability Measures Based on Waiting Time
Waiting time at stop is an important parameter affecting
user perception about the reliability of the system [11].
Ghalomi and Ziaee [12] considered average passenger

Fig. 2 Existing Public Transport

Reliability Measures I- Headway Regularity Measures II- Waiting Time Measures
™ Headway Regularity ™ Mean Delay Model
™ COV of Headway ™ Variance Delay Model
™ Std Dev of Headway ™ Scheduling Model
™ Headway Regularity Index ™ ASL and ASE Model
™ Headway Irregularity Index ™ Bus Punctuality Indicator
™ Public Performance Measure

IV- Travel Time Measure III- Transfer Time Measures

™ TT Coefficient of Variaon ™ COV of Transfer Delay
™ Planning Time ™ Transfer Waing Time
™ T90-T10 ™ Expected Transfer Waing
™ λ variance Time Model
™ λ skewness
™ Buffer Time Index
™ Planning Time Index
™ Recovery Time Approach
™ Reliability Time Index
™ Punctuality Index of Routes
Int. J. ITS Res.
waiting time at stop as a measure of public transport
performance. Overall three types of waiting time models
were observed in the literature viz., mean delay, vari-
ance delay and scheduling delay. A mean delay model
is used for PT systems because this approach focuses
only on delays related to the schedule or time table
i.e. for the fixed service. This model can be in a form
of utility equation in which utility represents a function
of expected delay in minutes “E(DM)” after the sched-
uled arrival [6]. The functional form of this model is
demonstrated in Eq. (1)
Utility ¼ T þ λ*EðDM Þ ð1Þ
Where ‘T’ is the scheduled travel time in minutes, is the coeffi-
cient. The value of delay in minutes (average minute’s lateness)
is estimated by a stated preference survey in which users tell
their willingness to pay to avoid 1 in ‘n’ probability of a certain
delay time. Trompet. al. [5] introduced a parameter named ex-
cess waiting time (EWT) which is defined as the difference
between average waiting time (AWT) and scheduled waiting
time (SWT). If for a PT service transit units arrive irregularly
then the AWT is calculated as AWT = μ*(1 + s2/μ2)/2, where μ
represents the mean headway and s2 is headway variance [7].
In Variance Delay Model, the utility is represented as a func-
tion of standard deviation ‘f(s)’ of travel time [13]. Standard
deviation is a conventional measures to estimate variability in
travel time. The model form is demonstrated at Eq. (2):
Utility ¼ T þ λ*f ðSÞ ð2Þ
The reliability ratio is estimated by dividing the coefficient of
standard deviation to coefficient of travel time. This reliability
ratio can directly be used to measure performance of PT system.
In Scheduling Model, utility is represented as a function of
expected travel time ‘E(T)’, expected time before preferred ar-
rival time ‘E(SDE)’, expected time after preferred arrival time
‘E(SDL)’ and p is probability of arriving after preferred arrival
time [8]. The model form is expressed in Eq. (3):
Utility ¼ aEðTÞ þ βEðSDEÞ þ γEðSDLÞ þ θP ð3Þ
Bates et al. [9] and Noland & Polak [10], further improved
the existing utility model given in eq. 3. They suggested im-
provement in the model by adding additional parameter like
Adherence Schedule Early (ASE) and Adherence Schedule
Late (ASL) and the revised form is provided in Eq.(4)
EðUÞ ¼ αEðTÞ þ βEðSDEÞ þ ΥEðSDLÞ þ θPL
þ βS E½ASEðth Þ þ Υs E½ASLðth Þ þ θs PLS : ð4Þ
Where E(U) is expected utility, ASE and ASL are
adherence to schedule early and adherence to schedule
late respectively, ‘s’ represents the cost associated with
adherence to schedule and PLS is probability of not
adhering to schedule. The models shown in Eq. (3)
and (4) presents the scheduling cost approach to esti-
mate the cost associated to being early or being late
based upon the responses of the passengers.
Simple reliability measures like Bus Punctuality
Indicator (BPI) and Public Performance Measure
(PPM) were also reported in the literature. BPI is the
Percentage of buses departing within 1 min early or up
to 5 min late relative to schedule time. This measure
was initially introduced and used by Department of
Transportation United Kingdom [14]. PPM presents the
percentage of transit units on time. Department for
Transport UK [15] uses PPM by assuming the transits
units arriving on time if it is arriving within 10 min of
the scheduled time for 1ong distance and 5 mints for
short distances. Figure 3a, b illustrates results of various
waiting time models developed in different literature for
different modes.
For the sake of comparison minutes of in vehicle travel time
(IVT) value equivalent to one minute change in Average Minute
Lateness (AML) and change in standard deviation as reported is
presented [4]. AML represents the mean of unexpected waiting
time, for example in a study by Benwell and Black [16] it was
observed that rail users perceive one minute change in AML as
equivalent to 12 min of IVT.
From various literatures the minutes of IVT equivalent
to one minute change in AML and one minute change in
standard deviation for various public transportation modes
are presented at Fig. 2. On observing the Fig. 3(a) it can
be inferred that among different modes of public transpor-
tation systems. Rail and Bus were showing the first two
highest minutes of IVT equivalent to AML. The highest
value was observed for the rail system i.e. to the range of
12 min. This study was carried out by Jansson and
Blomquist [17] in which they carried out valuation of
travel time by creating scenarios for with and without
the use of time table. In Fig. 3 (b) bus as a mode was
showing the highest value of equivalent IVT minutes for
one minute change in the standard deviation i.e. to the
range 2.5 to 3.0 min. This study was conducted by
MVA consultancy Ltd. [6] for both rail and bus services.
A different kind of waiting time study was carried out by
Hess et al. [18]. In this study the when the college stu-
dents were offered a free ride for an otherwise 75 cent trip
then they were ready to wait for 5 min. Their behavior
suggested that the disutility of time spent in waiting for a
free ride is less than $8.5 per hour. If the same waiting
time was given to the paid trip passenger then they over-
estimate this wait time by a factor of 2.

a) Reliability Measurement Based on Average Minute Lateness (AML)
b) Reliability Measurement Based Upon Standard Deviation of Travel Time
Fig. 3 Reliability Measurement Based upon AML and Standard Deviation
4 Reliability Measures Based on Headway
Regularity
Limited studies have been reported investigating reliability
measures based on Headway Regularity. The headway regu-
larity measures gives an accurate idea about reliability [34,
35]. A high frequency of transit system results in random
arrival of the passengers and also reduces aggregated waiting
time [7]. Reliability analysis is done by comparing service
regularity, schedule headway, headway ratio and percentage
deviation in regularity [36].
Osuna and Newell [7] developed measures based upon the
characteristics of headway distribution like standard devia-
tion, coefficient of variation (COV) and average waiting time.
Two more index were proposed by Henderson et al. [37] and
Golshani [38] i.e. headway regularity index and the irregular-
ity index. The former identifies the bunching problem while
Int. J. ITS Res.
the later gives an idea about the long gaps between the
vehicles.
5 Travel Time Based Reliability Measures
Kathuria et al. [39] in a study reported that the TTR can be
considered as a function of travel time variability (TTV). The
TTR measures reported in the literature are majorly based on
travel time distribution and central tendency Sekhar and
Asakura [40]. The following paragraphs will discuss various
statistical TTR measures available till date.
Sekhar and Asakura [40] reported a simple measure of
TTR estimation i.e. Coefficient of Variation (COV). This mea-
sure is defined as the ratio of the standard deviation (SD) of
the travel time to the average travel time. COV is a popular
measure as it depicts the depression in the travel time
Int. J. ITS Res.
distribution. The COV can be mathematically estimated as
given in Eq. 5.
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
1 D   centile TT – average TT) which is required to ensure on
∑ TTd;p −TTp
D d¼1
COV ¼ ð5Þ
TTp
In Eq. 5, during the time window p, COV is the coefficient of
variation for D number of days. The acronym TTd,p is the aver-
age travel time for d days and for the time window p. TTp is the
mean value of travel time for the time window p. A higher value
of COV will indicate more variation in travel time and eventu-
ally less travel time reliability. Sekhar and Asakura [40] reported
another important measure of TTR viz., planning time. The
planning time is also known as the 95th percentile of travel time,
it tells that how worst can a transit travel time delay be. The
planning time as a measure is useful for the passenger informa-
tion. Mazloumi et al. [41] suggested a difference in percentile
measure i.e. the T90-T10, it is the difference of 10th percentile of
travel time from 90th percentile of travel time. A high difference
suggests high TTV and correspondingly low TTR. Lint &
Zuylen [42] and Mazhloumi et al. [41] proposed a travel time
distribution based measure to estimate the TTR i.e. λ var. This
measure can be estimated as a ratio of difference of 90th and
10th percentile to the 50th percentile of travel time. Equation 6
can be used to estimate λ var, a higher value of this measure will
present more width of the travel time distribution.
90th percentile TT−50th percentile TT
λvar ¼ ð6Þ
50th percentile TT
Lint et al. [42] in a study suggested a new travel time
measure i.e. λ skew. This measure can be estimated as given
in Eq. 7 which gives a probability of extreme travel time. A
higher value of the measure indicates that the probability of
extreme travel time occurrence is high.
90th percentile TT−50th percentile TT
λskew ¼ ð7Þ
50th percentile TT−10th percentile TT
Fig. 4 Uncertainties causing TTV
in a public transportation system
Traffic Flow
Passenger Route
Wise Demand
Direconal Flow
at Intersecon
FHWA [43] reported a popular indicator to measure
travel time reliability i.e. Buffer Time Index (BTI).
Equation 8 can be used to estimate BTI mathematically.
BTI generally presents the extra buffer time (95th per-
time arrival.
BufferIndexðBIÞ ¼ ½95thpercentileTT−½ATT=ATT ð8Þ
In Eq. 8 the acronym ATT is the average travel time
and TT is the Travel time. FHWA [43] suggested an
indicator that is useful for the passengers to plan their
trip. The indicate name is Planning Time Index (PTI).
As per FHWA [43] this indicator is estimated as the
ratio of the 95th percentile TT and free flow TT, later
Ma et al. [35] modified this index for public transpor-
tation systems as expressed in Eq. 9:
Planning Time Index ðPTIÞ
95th percentile travel time
¼ ð9Þ
average travel time
A PTI of 1.20 will give an information to the pas-
senger that they have to plan for an additional 30 per-
centage of TT above the off-peak hour TT to ensure the
95 percentage of the on time arrival. Chepuri et al. [44]
used this indicator in their study as a ratio of planning
time and free flow TT. Kieu et al. [45] proposed anoth-
er travel time distribution based approach i.e. RTA (re-
covery time approach). RTA is a probabilistic approach
which estimates the probability of the actual TT to be
higher than the scheduled TT as expressed by Eq. 10.
Pr ðTTd:r:s ≥β þ T 50r; s Þ ð10Þ
In Eq. 10, T50r,s is the median value of the travel time, β is
the recovery time, β + T50r,s is the total scheduled travel time.
The value of β is estimated for different times of the day.
Factors Causing TTV
Facility Design
Accidents & Driver Behaviour
Demand Supply Traffic Management
Schemes
Vehicle
Breakdown
Weather
Public Transport TTV
 Int. J. ITS Res.

Fig. 5 Routes of Ahmedabad Bus

Rapid Transit System

Reliability Time Index: It is estimated as 95thpercentile TT time period thresholds δ;1 ; δ;2 are used to determine on time
minus 50th percentile TT divided by 50th percentile TT [35] arrival [46].
and this is presented in Eq. (11)

Reliability Time IndexðRTIÞ 6 Reliability Measures Based on Transfer Time

95th percentile travel time−50th percentile travel time
¼ With upcoming of intelligent transportation system tick-
50th percentile travel time
ð11Þ etless travel i.e. travel using smartcard is being imple-
mented. Smart cards have an advantage that it demon-
Chen et al. [46] proposed an indicator viz., Punctuality strates the transfer delay data of the passengers [47].
Index (PI) which is defined as the probability of a transit unit This data can be used to measure the transfer time re-
arriving at the terminal in a given span of time. The mathe- liability. There are following indices which can be used
matical formulation of this measure is shown in Eq. (12) to measure transfer time reliabilities and those are:

  
PIR ¼ P trun −tsch ϵ δ;1 ; δ;2 ð12Þ Coefficient of variation of transfer delay or of the waiting
time at the transfer points. This is a simple indicator of
Where trun is the actual running time of route during one reliability and can be used on the transfer delay data ex-
bus trip, tsch is the scheduled running time of the route and tracted by the smart card data [47]

Table 1 Combined retrieved data

from GPS devices STOP 1 (000–29, Maninagar) STOP 2 (001–30, Swaminarayan Mandir)

Scheduled departure Real departure Difference Scheduled Real Difference

time time arrival arrival

06:41:00 06:38:18 −00:02:42 06:41:00 06:42:16 00:01:16

06:53:00 06:40:47 −00:12:13 06:53:00 06:54:04 00:01:04
07:05:00 06:50:34 −00:14:26 07:05:00 07:06:42 00:01:42
07:17:00 07:05:00 −00:12:00 07:17:00 07:18:24 00:01:24
Int. J. ITS Res.

a) Within a day travel time variation of route 1

b) Within a day travel time variation of route 2

Fig. 6 Travel time variation for every 30 min departure time window

Table 2 Within the day travel time statistics of route 1

Descriptive statistics Morning off – peak Morning peak Inter-peak Evening peak Evening off-peak

Mean travel Time (Minutes) 38.03 39.51 36.71 42.14 34.27

Average Journey Speed(km/h) 19.1 18.4 19.5 17.6 21.2
Standard Dev 4.16 6.23 3.4 4.03 6.25
COV (%) 11 15 9 9 16
T10 (Min) 34.53 36.36 36.4 40.01 33.54
T50 (Min) 38.31 41.02 40.14 42.52 39.44
T90 (Min) 42.35 49.16 43.31 47.16 45.33
T95 (Min) 43.3 51.32 44.03 48.07 46.45
T90 – T 10/T50 (%) 21.0 31.0 17.0 17.0 29.0
 Int. J. ITS Res.

Table 3 Within the day travel time statistics of route 2

Descriptive statistics Morning off – peak Morning peak Interpeak Evening peak Evening off-peak

Mean travel Time (Minutes) 59.6 65.3 62.38 68.75 58

Average Journey Speed(km/h) 21.9 19.4 21.3 18.8 22.1
Standard Dev 8.22 8.23 5.02 7.34 5.09
COV (%) 14 13 8 11 9
T10 (Min) 52.22 57.06 55.57 60.23 53.45
T50 (Min) 57.21 62.45 60.38 67.45 57.41
T90 (Min) 74.54 76.3 68.44 78.57 65.25
T95 (Min) 76.16 78.59 70.12 80.02 67.06
T90 – T 10/T50 (%) 73.6 75.4 67.5 77.7 64.3

Transfer waiting time is a direct estimation of trans-
fer point delays. Ceder [2] reported that transfer
waiting time usually serves as a good transfer time
reliability indicator.
Expected Transfer Waiting Time Model depends on the
arrival delays. Knopper and Muller [48] derived a peri-
odic function of the transfer waiting time model. Goverde
[49] developed the expected transfer waiting time model
as a transfer delay density function for probability of train
arriving on times as presented in Eq. (13)
 
Gi tTi if p ¼ 0
f i ðpÞ ¼  
gi p þ tTt if p > 0
Where gi is density function of stochastic running time Ti of
the feeder train denoted by ‘i’ and Gi(T) is the corresponding
delay distribution function.
7 Factors Affecting Public Transport Service
Reliability
The delay in trips of Public transportation users is mainly
caused by factors related to infrastructure design, vehicle
breakdown etc. Various factors affecting reliability can be
listed under supply and demand side factors as demonstrat-
ed in Fig. 4. The first demand side factor is the traffic flow
on the roads. Conventional bus transit system which moves
under mixed traffic is affected by the traffic flow in terms
of increased travel time. More traffic density on these trav-
el section can cause congestion at few points and hence can
reduce reliability of the transit service. Delay at intersec-
tion is a major impedence in a transit service, this is an
important uncertainty factor in case of Bus Rapid Transit
System (BRTS) where concepts of transit priority signals
are still not implemented. The third demand side factor is
Passenger demand which can create a variability in dwell
times at different stops along different routes hence affect-
ing the reliability of the system by affecting the total travel
time [50]. Supply side factors include both internal and
ð13Þ external uncertainties. Internal are like Facility Designs,
traffic management schemes and vehicle breakdown and
external are like weather, accidents etc. Abdelfattah and
Khan [51] demonstrated the effect of traffic accidents on
the transit travel times. Noland and Polak [10] also
commented that accidents are major cause of congestion
in urban areas and hence affecting transit reliability.
Facility design includes the route characteristics like in
the case bus service it will be the number of bus stops,
number of intersections, location of the route including
the landuse along the routes, presence of side friction like
on street parking [52, 53]. Weather conditions like heavy
rainfall, fog can result in increased travel times [54]. Driver
behaviour can impact the overall travel times of the system
[36]. All the above factors can cause variability in travel
times in different ways like vehicle to vehicle, period to
period and day to day variability [41].

Table 4 Comparison of
scheduled TT and percentile TT of Percentile Value Morning off - peak Morning peak Inter-peak Evening peak Evening off-peak
route 1
T10 (Min) 34.53(31) 36.36(35) 36.4(31) 40.01(36) 33.54(30)
T50 (Min) 38.31 41.02 40.14 42.52 39.44
T95 (Min) 43.3 50.36 44.03 48.07 46.45
Int. J. ITS Res.
Table 5 Comparison of
scheduled TT and percentile TT of Percentile Value Morning off - peak
route 2
T10 (Min) 52.22(52)
T50 (Min) 57.21
T95 (Min) 76.16
8 Case Study
8.1 BRT Route Description
The case study applies the TTR measures on two routes of Bus
Rapid Transit System (BRTS), Ahmedabad, India. The
Ahmedabad BRTS is more than 10 year old system running
as a hybrid BRTS system i.e. maximum of the system is a
closed system but wherever sufficient right of way (ROW) is
not available it operates as an open BRT system. This system
is considered to be an efficient transit system when compared
to other nine transit systems running in India. This system is
managed and operated by a special purpose vehicle (SPV) i.e.
Ahmedabad Janmarg Limited.
The two routes considered in the study are presented in Fig.
5a, b. The route one originates from Maninagar BRTS stop
and terminates at the Iskon BRTS stop. Whereas the route two
originates from Maninagar BRTS stop and terminates at Visat
BRTS stop. The route one starts from the south eastern part of
the Ahmedabad area and ends at the western part of the city.
On the other hand, route two starts from south western area of
the city and ends at city north. The total lengths of route 1 and
2 are 12.1 km and 22 km respectively. The total number of bus
stops intersections (signalized and un-signalized) in route 22
and 25 respectively, and in route 2 are 36 and 31 respectively.
8.2 GPS Data Collection
Ahmedabad BRTS buses are installed with GPS devices
which collects continuous bus position data at different time
intervals. The data from the GPS device is exported in XML
dialect having details like scheduled arrival time and actual
Fig. 7 Ahmedabad BRT system weekly ridership
Morning peak Inter-peak Evening peak Evening off-peak
57.06(56) 55.57(52) 60.23(56) 53.45(56)
62.45 60.38 67.45 57.41
78.59 70.12 79.51 67.06
arrival time as presented in Table 1. From the GPS data based
excel sheets received from Ahmedabad Janmarg Limited,
2125 bus trip data was correctly retrieved. It is important to
note here that the retrieved date is for half cycle which means
that it is for upstream side of both the routes i.e. from
Maninagar to Iskon for route 1 and from Maninagar to Visat
for route 2. The travel time data obtained from two routes can
be clubbed together by taking 30 min departure time window
data together as presented in Fig. 6a, b. The data presented in
Fig. 6 is two weeks of travel time data. In Fig. 6, it is easy to
notice the four distinct periods. The four periods are the morn-
ing-peak, inter-peak, evening-peak and evening off-peak. It
can be further observed from the Fig. 6 that the TT is ranging
from 42 min to 89 min and from 3 min to 57 min for routes
one and two respectively. Apart from the TT plots the Fig. 6
also demonstrates average TT, 90th percentile TT and 10th
percentile TT.
8.3 Within a Day TTV
If the difference between the T90 and T10 plots is high it
means that the TTV for that particular time period is high.
More TTV was observed during the morning peak (08:00 to
10:00) and evening peak-hours (16:00 to 20:00) making these
periods to have low travel time reliability. On the other hand
during the off-peak periods both the routes are showing high
travel time reliability. The graphs presented in Fig. 6 are easy
to understand for visually analyzing the TTR but it becomes
important to analyze the TTV statistically to comment about
TTR. Therefore, Tables 2, 3, 4, and 5 presents the descriptive
statistics for estimating the within the day TTR at different
periods of the day. The peak and off-peak periods of the
 Int. J. ITS Res.

Friday

Thursday

Wednesday

Tuesday

Monday

(a) Reliability map of route-1 based on COV

Friday

Thursday

Wednesday

Tuesday

Monday

(b): Reliability map of route-1 based on COV

Fig. 8 a Reliability map of route-1 based on COV. b Reliability map of route-1 based on COV

BRT system are decided by using the ridership data of the
system. Figure 7 illustrates the ridership data of the entire
working day, based on this data the peak and off peak periods
were decided and considered in Tables 2 and 3. The mean TT
of route 1 varies from 36.71 min during the inter-peak period
to 42.14 min during the evening peak period. And from
58 min during the evening off-peak period to 68.75 min in
evening peak period of route two. The variation in average
travel time during different periods of the day is apparent.
More variation in average travel time for off-peak and peak
hours suggest that there is a delay observed at the stops during
peak hours which can be confirmed by high travel time values.
Therefore, the scheduled arrival time at the stops should con-
sider the variation in travel time so that he passengers perceive
a greater travel time reliability.
It was observed for the route 1 that trend of the mean travel
time is parallel to the T10 and T50. Whereas, in route two the
trend of the mean TT is parallel to T10, T50 and T90. A greater
value of T90-T10/T50 at different periods of the day in route 1
and route 2 indicates unstable travel times during these periods.
A high COV value was time is shown in the brackets which is
either close to or less than the 10th percentile travel time value.
Int. J. ITS Res.
This indicates that with this schedule time less than 10% of the
buses will be on time. By understanding this operator should
change the scheduled time based on the GPS data.
8.4 Day to Day Travel Time Variation
The last step in the TTR analysis of route is estimating the day
to day TTV. MATLAB based TTV maps were developed in
the present study considering COV as a measure. The TTV
heat maps can be observed in Fig. 8a, b. The dark areas in the
heat map indicates low TTR and the light areas in heat maps
show high TTR. The reliability maps are very easy to under-
stand using the scale given along with them, the operators can
use these maps to identify the unreliable periods for different
days and at different times. Based on these maps further op-
erational improvements can be suggested.
9 Conclusions
Public transport (PT) reliability is important for both passen-
ger and operator. Unreliable service can increase the cost of
operation and also reduce the ridership. In the present study
review of various PT reliability measures have been summa-
rized. Few of the reviewed measures are tested on BRTS cor-
ridor of Ahmedabad using ITS data. The main findings of the
study are as following:
& Public transport reliability measures can be divided in four
quadrants i.e. headway regularity waiting time, transfer
time and travel time measures.
& These measures majorly use GPS, smart card and stated
preference primary survey data. The waiting time mea-
sures were based on the utility based models and used
the stated preference data to build the model.
Whereas, headway regularity and travel time measures
used GPS data to understand the travel time variation.
Transfer time measure were dependent on the waiting time
data at the transfer point and hence could be collected from
the smart card data.
& Causes of uncertainties in travel time can be listed under
demand and supply oriented factors. These factors may
vary depending upon the type of PT mode for e.g. the
impact of traffic flow on dedicated facilities like Metro
or BRTS is minimal but it could be a governing indicator
of reliability in conventional and hybrid bus transit
system.
& The focus of the case study was to evaluate the perfor-
mance of the BRTS routes using few of the reviewed
reliability measures. By within the day travel time vari-
ability analysis, it was observed that, the average journey
speed was lowest during the evening peak of both the
routes indicating a low performance during this period.
Further TTV was high during evening off peak and and
morning off peak for route 1 and 2 respectively.
& On comparing the schedule travel time value with the
percentile travel time, it was observed that these values
are either matching with 10th percentile travel time or
are below it. Therefore, it is strongly recommended there
is a need to revise the scheduled travel time to at least
match the 75th percentile travel time value during differ-
ent periods of the day.
& Monochromatic maps (Fig. 7a, b) were introduced in this
study to visually understand the travel time variability
within the day. These maps are created using MATLAB
software and are very useful to planners and operators for
improving the service. Further, for analyzing entire year’s
big data i.e. with travel time values to the range of 0.2
million, these visual maps can be very useful in clubbing
the entire data in different colour bars showing average
values of COV with different darkness at different depar-
ture time windows.
& The day to day travel time variability analysis revealed
that Monday had the highest variation in travel time. The
reason for this was closely understood and it was found
that a high dwell time variation was observed on the stops
during Monday. This causes variation in travel time
resulting into low performance of the routes during this
day.
The case study in the present paper was limited to using only
GPS data, the review study can be extending by including var-
ious reliability measure based on smart card data and other sec-
ondary data sources for different public transportation systems.
Acknowledgements The authors are thankful to Ahmedabad Janmarg
Limited, India for their continuous support in data collection.
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Ch. Ravi Sekhar is a principal sci-

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ning division of CSIR-Central
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Road Research Institute New
Singapore. Road Transport Res. 7(3), 48–57 (1998) Delhi, India. He teaches statistical
54. Hofmann, M., and O’Mahony, M. “The impact of adverse weather methods in engineering, soft com-
conditions on urban bus performance measures”. Proc., 8th Int. puting techniques in engineering,
IEEE Conf. On intelligent transportation systems, IEEE, Vienna, and optimization techniques for
Austria, 2005 master and Ph.D. students. He re-
ceived his Ph.D. from Kobe
University in Kobe, Japan. His
Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to areas of specialization include
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. public transport and transport
planning. He has contributed to
several research papers/articles in
Indian and foreign journals, and conference proceedings. He also has
published book chapters and has completed 35 research projects.
Ankit Kathuria is an assistant
professor in the department of
civil engineering at the Indian
Institute of Technology Jammu
(IIT-JMU), India. He completed
his post-doctoral studies from the
Indian Institute of Technology
Bombay, India and received a
Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of
Technology in Roorkee, India. He
has a master’s degree in transport
planning from the School of
Planning and Architecture in
New Delhi, India and is an asso-
ciate member of the Institute of
Town Planners, India. He has published 11 papers and presented 13
papers at national and international conferences in the areas of public
transportation and intelligent transportation systems.

Manoranjan Parida received his

Ph.D. in 1995 from the University
of Roorkee (now the Indian
I n s t i t u t e o f Te c h n o l o g y
Roorkee). He is a professor in
the civil engineering department
and Deputy Director at IIT
Roorkee. His areas of research
specialization include urban trans-
portation planning and traffic
safety. Dr. Parida has contributed
to more than 331 research papers/
articles in Indian and foreign
journals, and conference proceed-
ings. He has published chapters in
two books, and has completed 16 sponsored research projects and more
than 330 consultancy projects.