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To attract more riders, transit must offer highlevels of service in frequency, travel time, andreliability. Transit agencies constantly work to

improve reliability, but the cost is often substantial.Real-time transit information can improve perceivedand actual wait time and rider satisfaction inexpen-sively—and even may increase ridership.

ProblemTransit agencies can improve service reliability byproviding dedicated right-of-way and signal priorityon routes, adding slack to schedules, applying otherservice planning approaches, and implementing vehi-cle holds and other control strategies. Although effec-tive, these measures either yield only minorimprovements or prove costly. An inexpensive solu-tion is needed to combat transit users’ perception thatservice is unreliable.

SolutionUnknown wait times present a difficulty for manytransit riders—riders want to know when the transitvehicle actually will be arriving. By empowering rid-ers with some degree of confidence about their trips,transit agencies can increase ridership and retain rid-ers who have a choice of modes.

Several technology enhancements have made theprovision of real-time transit information easier, lesscostly, and more effective for transit agencies:

u In 2000, the federal government deactivated theselective availability restrictions on GPS for civilianapplications. This increased the usefulness and avail-ability and decreased the cost of GPS devices. Moretransit agencies were able to equip their vehicles withautomatic vehicle location systems.

u In 2005, Google and TriMet in Portland, Ore-gon, collaborated to standardize transit schedule data.The General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) thatemerged has enabled transit agencies to share theirdata, which can be used to populate Google’s transittrip planner. This application has raised awarenessand has sped adoption of the transit data standards.New standards, such as GTFS-Realtime and the Ser-vice Interface for Real-time Information, or SIRI,allow agencies to share real-time data feeds withdevelopers.

u The ubiquity of smartphones throughout theUnited States has facilitated mobile access to infor-mation by the majority of transit riders, and third-party software developers are interested in creatingapplications. As more transit agencies release theirdata feeds in response to the push for open data,developers can gain access to transit data feeds fromacross the nation.

These technological advances catalyzed the devel-opment of OneBusAway, a mobile real-time transitinformation platform.1

ApplicationOneBusAway was developed in 2008 at the Universityof Washington. By 2011, more than 100,000 uniqueusers in the greater Seattle region consulted One -BusAway each week on a range of platforms, includ-ing native applications on iPhone, Android, andWindows phones, as well as through a website, textmessaging, a voice recognition system, and publicdisplays in store windows.

OneBusAway is an open-source system that allowsdevelopers, researchers, and transit agencies to adapt

RESEARCH PAYS OFF

Assessing the Impacts of Real-Time Transit InformationK A R I E D I S O N W A T K I N S A N D C A N D A C E B R A K E W O O D

The Bus Renaissance

Watkins is AssistantProfessor, Georgia Tech,Atlanta, and Brakewoodis Assistant Professor,City College of NewYork, New York City.

A real-time bus andstreetcar arrival kiosk inSeattle, Washington.

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1 http://onebusaway.org.

Suggestions forResearch Pays Off topicsare welcome. ContactStephen Maher, Trans-portation ResearchBoard, Keck 486, 500Fifth Street, NW, Wash-ington, DC 20001 (202-334-2955; smaher@nas.edu).

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the code to their own systems and to build on the ini-tial implementation. In 2013, improvements to theOneBusAway mobile apps allowed data from severalregions to feed the apps, enabling deployment inseveral cities, including New York City; Tampa,Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; Washington, D.C.; andYork, Ontario, Canada. Additional technologydemonstrations have been implemented in Detroit,Michigan; Washington, D.C.; Boston, Massachusetts;and Lappeenranta, Finland.

Transit agencies have initiated some of the devel-opment; in other cases, local developers have soughtto fill a gap in available rider information with theintention of supporting the application in the longterm or attracting the interest of the local transitagency for adoption.

BenefitsThe OneBusAway research project evaluated theeffect of this informational tool on ridership levelsand on rider perceptions. Surveys of OneBusAwayusers in Seattle in 2009 and 2012 found that 92 per-cent of riders reported increased or greatly increasedsatisfaction with public transportation, as well as anincreased sense of safety, among other benefits.

Wait TimesAnother study conducted in Seattle focused on users’perceived and actual wait times. The results showedthat for riders without real-time information, theperceived wait time was much greater than theactual, measured wait time; but when real-time infor-mation was available, the respondents’ perceptionswere in line with reality. Moreover, the studyobserved that mobile real-time information usersactually waited almost 2 minutes less than those whoused traditional schedule information.

An evaluation of OneBusAway in Tampa in 2013included an experiment—some bus riders receivedaccess to OneBusAway for three months. Changes inbehavior were assessed with before and after web-based surveys. Analysis of “usual” wait timesrevealed a significantly larger decrease—nearly 2minutes—for real-time transit information userscompared with the wait times of the control group.In addition, real-time users reported significantdecreases in levels of frustration when waiting.

RidershipIn some cases, real-time information may have con-tributed to an increase in transit ridership. The stud-ies conducted in Seattle showed that riders reportedan increase in trips, particularly in the off-peak peri-ods when the transit system has additional capacity.Studies conducted in Tampa and Atlanta, in con-

trast, did not find a substantial change in transittravel associated with use of real-time information;the study methodologies in Tampa and Atlanta, how-ever, did not consider completely new transit riders.

A recently published study evaluated bus rider-ship in New York City for three years during whichreal-time information gradually was made availableon bus routes throughout the city. Econometricmethods controlled for other factors that affect busridership levels, and the models suggested that real-time bus information was associated with a medianincrease of 1.7 percent in weekday route-level busridership.

Positive OutcomesIn summary, the OneBusAway project has enabledtesting of the impacts of real-time transit informa-tion, and the findings have revealed positive out-comes: increased satisfaction, decreased wait times,and even increased ridership. As more transit agen-cies adopt open data policies and more transit ridersuse mobile devices, these benefits are likely to con-tinue to accrue.

ResourcesBrakewood, C., S. Barbeau, and K. Watkins. An Experiment

Validating the Impacts of Transit Information on Bus Rid-ers in Tampa, Florida. Transportation Research Part A, Vol.69, pp. 409–422, 2014.

Brakewood, C., G. Macfarlane, and K. Watkins. The Impact ofReal-Time Information on Bus Ridership in New York City,Transportation Research Part C, Vol. 53, pp. 59–75, 2015.

Ferris, B., K. Watkins, and A. Borning. OneBusAway: Resultsfrom Providing Real-Time Arrival Information for PublicTransit. In Proceedings of the Association for ComputingMachinery Conference on Human Factors in Computing Sys-tems, New York, pp. 1807–1816, 2010.

Gooze, A., K. Watkins, and A. Borning. Benefits of Real-TimeTransit Information and Impacts of Data Accuracy on RiderExperience. In Transportation Research Record: Journal of theTransportation Research Board, No. 2351, TransportationResearch Board of the National Academies, Washington,D.C., pp. 95–103, 2013.

Watkins, K., B. Ferris, A. Borning, G. S. Rutherford, and D. Lay-ton. Where Is My Bus? Impact of Mobile Real-Time Infor-mation on the Perceived and Actual Wait Time of TransitRiders. Transportation Research Part A, Vol. 45, No. 8, pp.839–848, 2011.

Windmiller, S., T. Hennessy, and K. Watkins. Accessibility ofCommunication Technology and the Rider Experience:Case Study of St. Louis, Missouri, Metro. In TransportationResearch Record: Journal of the Transportation ResearchBoard, No. 2415, Transportation Research Board of theNational Academies, Washington, D.C., pp. 118–126,2014.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Appreciation is expressed to JosephMorris, Transportation Research Board, for hisefforts in developing this article.

OneBusAway smart -phone displays on avariety of devices.

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