Minneapolis-St. Paul Transit Service Reliability Demonstration

Abstract

This report summarizes the results of UMTA's first transit service reliability demonstration. The demonstration was implemented by the Metropolitan Transit Commission on a high-frequency branched bus route--Route 5 in Minneapolis. the aim of the demonstration was to test the hypothesis that a combination of rescheduling and dynamic strategies could improve reliability without significant increases in cost or other negative effects on operation. The project involved application of a holding point strategy, preceded by schedule changes needed to fine-tune the route. The holding policy was based on improving schedule adherence, although it also incorporated efforts to moderate large headway gaps. The results of the project indicate that reliability was improved by on-street supervision at a control point combined with application of specific holding policies. Furthermore, indications are that supervision alone was more important than the holding policy in improving reliability and that the benefits were sustained beyond the period of application. This implies that drivers have greater ability to control unreliability than they typically acknowledge, and that further study of driver behavior would be worthwhile. The reuslting improvements in reliability should allow operators to reduce fleet size by more than enough to justify the costs of the supervisor. The cost-effectiveness could be even greater if several routes can be monitored at a single control point or strategies can be applied on an occasional basis.