The Effectiveness Analysis of Bus Information and Management Deployment in Busan Metropolitan City

A need to establish an efficient traffic system by applying the state-of-the-art technology to the existing road and transportation is growing as the costly increase in facility supply to solve the issue of traffic congestion hits a limit in response to the growing use of private vehicles in the Busan area. As part of the Bus Information Management System (BIMS) project, Busan City has established and currently operates the Bus Information Center as a pilot service for limited number of routes including connection routes in Gimhae and Yangsan. The city government is planning to expand this service to all routes. Based on the implementation of the Semi-Public System of Busan City Bus on May 15th, 2007, the need for a scientific Bus Information Management grew and Busan City completed the development of Bus Route Analysis Tool utilizing transportation card and BIMS data. BIMS project of Busan City expanded the facilities to 15 information booths in stations, 1,516 navigation systems on board and 88 RF base stations based on the RF communication center system from the 1st to the metropolitan projects and improved the functionality by reinforcing the route management function of administrator software through additional installation and transfer of Bus Information Center System. The purpose of this project is to improve the service quality of public transportation by optimizing bus information management and by providing real time public transportation information for bus operators, bus drivers and bus users as a guide on bus arrival time, required time of travel, transfer information etc. The purpose of this research is to analyze the successful implementation of the Bus Information Management System of Busan City. Approaches to evaluate the optimal system implementation of this project can be largely categorized into the Bench Mark Test (BMT) by each unit system and the System Performance Evaluation. Effectiveness analysis for survey and economical analysis method is provided considering the set criteria and survey method. The survey is analyzed by classifying items into qualitative and quantitative ones. Qualitative items include awareness of bus route information, satisfaction level etc., and quantitative items include calculation of benefits using the change in waiting time before and after the system installation and economical analysis etc. This research calculates the benefits for bus users and operators after the BIMS installation by converting the waiting time into time values, and implements the economical analysis such as benefit/cost ratio based on this conversion to quantify the effect after introducing the BIMS system. Results of effectiveness analysis that can be used as an effective guide or direction in establishing the plan for Bus Information System through various methods such as future BIMS installation type categorization or comparative analysis before and after the installation must be provided.