Investigation of Instantaneous Effects of Real-time Crowding Information (RTCI) Availability upon Urban Public Transport System Performance

Abstract

The purpose of this study would be to analyse the implications of providing real-time crowding information (RTCI) on instantaneous (current) crowding levels of public transport (PT) services to travelers – and more specifically, to investigate the output RTCI impact for the on-going PT system performance, based on simulation works on a case study (city-level) network model. In recent years, an increasing emphasis has been put on development of various travel demand management tools and especially advanced traveler information systems (ATIS), which aim to overcome problems associated with ever growing passenger congestion in urban transport systems - and thus improve the overall travel experience, reliability and quality of service of the PT system. One of key ATIS developments has witnessed the widespread introduction of real-time information (RTI) systems [3], which provide passengers with information on current travel times of public transport services, waiting times at stops etc. Likewise, a further extension of these systems is highly feasible within the framework of modern-day ITS systems, as passenger flow data collected from various sources – APC and AFC systems, smart-card ticketing systems etc. – can be then utilized to inform travelers about the current passenger flows, i.e. real-time loading levels of public transport vehicles (the so-called RTCI system). However, this also indicates a substantial research gap as (to the best of our knowledge) there is still a fairly limited amount of relevant studies, with just individual sources having investigated the effects of RTCI provision in terms of simulation approach [2], [5] or survey analysis [6], [9]. Moreover, practical implementation of such systems in PT networks is yet (to this date) confined to limited-scale deployment, often on pilot (trial) basis. Consequently, little is known about the potential effectiveness of RTCI systems and their implications both on demand (passengers’) side or supply (operators’ side).