Managing disruptions in public transport from the passenger perspective

Abstract

Double graduation. Second faculty is: Technology, Policy and Management. Department: Transport, Infrastructure and Logistics. Disruptions in public transport, if not properly addressed, can have consequent impacts on passengers, but also on public transport operators, translating into revenue loss. Yet so far, both operators and researchers have mainly focused on the supply side first (timetable, crews and rolling stock), before passengers. In this study, an assessment framework allowing for multiple service control strategies to be assessed and then compared for one given disruption from a passenger perspective is developed. It focuses on the incident phase, i.e. the phase from the start of the incident until the cause of the disruption is resolved. A case study in the metro of Rotterdam, operated by the RET, is used to test the framework. It reveals that there is room for improvement at the traffic control centre of the RET. On a yearly basis, savings in terms of societal costs could amount to approximately 900 K€, if every disruption similar to the case study is handled like in the best case scenario, deemed reasonably implementable by experts at the RET. There are two main takeaways for public transport operators. First, during the incident phase, a regularity paradigm benefits best passengers than a punctuality paradigm, thus impacting the way traffic controllers work. Second, pre-planned service control strategies in urban, rail-bound public transport systems need to have a variant for peak hours. The framework was thus successfully developed and can be used by other operators. In order to be more comprehensive, the next step could be to integrate some non-passenger-related impacts to the assessment.