Estimating Transit Vehicle Dwell Times at Bus Stops

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantitative method to accurately estimate total bus stop dwell times, including deceleration, boarding, alighting, acceleration, and merging, validated with real transit data.

Contribution

It develops and validates statistical models for each component of dwell time, integrating them into transit time estimation applications.

Findings

Deceleration and acceleration times estimated with low error (MAPE < 0.5%).

Merge time modeled effectively using regression approaches.

Models can be integrated into transit planning tools.

Abstract

This work presents a quantitative approach to estimate the total time spent in the vicinity of a bus stop including the deceleration time, the boarding and alighting time (developed in an earlier study), the acceleration time, and re-entry time (time required to merge into the adjacent lane). Different statistical models were used to compute the deceleration, acceleration and merge times. Typical deceleration and acceleration levels were computed using kinematic equations that were then used to compute both the deceleration and acceleration times. The adopted method to estimate both the deceleration time and the acceleration time was validated utilizing transit data from Blacksburg Transit (BT) using the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and root mean square error (RMSE). The MAPE and RMSE values were calculated to be 0.3 and 13.3 percent for the deceleration time and 0.42 and 2.72 percent for the acceleration time, respectively. The re-entry time was estimated to be a function of the adjacent roadway traffic density using both a multiple linear regression and Bayesian regression approach. Both methods showed consistency in estimating the merge-time model coefficients. The proposed models can be integrated with transit applications to estimate transit vehicle travel times.