Characterizing bus transit passenger waiting times

A statistically significant quantity of waiting time data, including related passenger attributes, transit system operational characteristics and bus frequency, were collected by direct observation and video taping in the city of Austin, Texas. The effects of bus line headway, schedule reliability index and many other potential predictors were examined. Mathematical models were developed to predict bus passenger waiting times in both totally random and real-world situations. Traditional, conceptual and new developed models were compared and evaluated. A new predictive linear model W = 2.0 + 0.3*BLH proved to be a reasonable and efficient model for describing passenger wait time using bus line headway as the independent variable. Difference between the traditional random model and the new developed model was examined. A 10 minute vehicle headway was identified as the transition from random passenger arrivals to non-random passenger arrivals.