Assessing Travel Time Reliability

of Public Transport in Kolkata: A Case

Study

Saptarshi Sen , Tarun Chowdhury, Ayan Mitra and Sudip Kumar Roy

Abstract Punctuality of a trip maker directly depends on the on-time performance

of the whole transportation system and specifically on the travel time reliability of
the preferred mode of transport. As a matter of this fact, daily commuters prefer a
reliable mode of transport which adheres to its schedule and is frequently available.
Thus, the present study aims to find only the travel time reliability of the different
public transport modes in a particular route of Kolkata Metropolitan Area. The route
from Bansdroni Bazar Area to Park Street Area was chosen as the case study area.
The in-vehicle travel time reliability of the state government bus, private bus and
minibus were estimated using the method proposed by Liu and Sinha [15] and the
results compared with that of the metro railway. The result of the analysis shows that
the travel time reliability of all bus types ranges from 45 to 65% of the reliability of
the metro railway. The parameters prescribed by FHWA, such as Buffer Time (TB ),
Buffer Index (Bi ), Planning Time (Pt ) and Planning Time Index (Pi ), were also esti-
mated which provides valuable information about the reliability of the buses plying
on the route under study. Delay parameters in transit contribute a lot to the travel time
which was also observed to indicate the reliability of buses from delay perspective.
The effects of some other relevant traffic parameters such as the congestion delay
and waiting time delay on reliability have also been discussed as well.

Keywords Public transport · Reliability · Travel time · Buffer time · Buffer

index · Planning time

S. Sen (B) · T. Chowdhury · S. K. Roy

Civil Engineering Department, IIEST, Shibpur, Howrah, India
e-mail: sen.saptarshi91@gmail.com
T. Chowdhury
e-mail: tarun19devcon@gmail.com
S. K. Roy
e-mail: royksudip@gmail.com
A. Mitra
Development Consultants Pvt. Ltd, Kolkata, India
e-mail: ayan_mitra18@yahoo.co.in

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 21

S. Pulugurtha et al. (eds.), Advances in Transportation Engineering,
Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering 34,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7162-2_3
22 S. Sen et al.

1 Introduction

Commuters all over the world try to minimise their overall journey time. This gives
rise to the need for reliable services of transportation system, especially the pub-
lic transport system. Reliability for various systems can be defined in various forms.
Reliability can be defined as the operational consistency of a facility over an extended
period of time. Ebeling [8] defined reliability as the probability that a system will
perform a required function for a given period of time. In transportation engineering,
reliability can be defined as the level of variability between the commuters’ expecta-
tion and the actual experience. Kolkata is a densely populated city and according to
a study by the Union Ministry of Urban Development in 2013, about 54% of daily
commuters avails bus for any trips. Hence, reliability of the bus system in Kolkata
is highly desirable. In a city where majority of the trip makers are of captive char-
acteristic, the unreliable public bus system would force the commuters to either opt
for para-transit system or shift towards personal vehicles. In most of the cases, the
personal vehicles will be of motorised two wheelers and four wheelers and also the
para-transit modes are mostly three-wheeled auto-rickshaws along with taxis and
application-driven cabs such as Uber/Ola, etc. Increase of these smaller size modes
of traffic in the same right of way along with the bigger size vehicles will not only
cause increase in congestion but will also have a bad impact on environmental pol-
lution. Therefore, it is necessary to operate the public transport system at desired
level of reliability. The present study mainly focuses on the in-vehicle travel time
reliability of the buses and the delays incurred during the bus trips in Kolkata. The
objectives of the study can be stated as follows:
• To estimate the travel time reliability of the public transport modes plying along
the specific study corridor.
• To compare the travel time reliability of different category of buses with that of
the metro railway.
• To estimate the buffer time and planning time required for the trip makers choosing
the public mode of transport system, especially buses as their mode of transport.
• To identify the delays in a trip and its effect on the travel time reliability.
The previous works and journals related to public transport reliability literature
have been summarised in the next section.

2 Literature Review

The concept of reliability in travel time has been introduced in the late twentieth
century, though in Indian context the applications have been in limited quantity.
Some of the recent works have been studied, and the relevant points have been
discussed here.
In 2013, Tony [17] identified the public transit priority features and the method
to enhance the operational characteristics of public transit in Munich, Germany and
Assessing Travel Time Reliability of Public Transport … 23

Zurich, Switzerland. Diab and EI-Geneidy [6], in the same year, tried to understand
the impacts of various improvement strategies on transit service reliability. Chien
and Liu [5] measured the travel time variability and reliability with floating car data.
Diana [7] showed that satisfaction measures of trip makers can be exploited to gain
insights on the relationships between personal attitudes, transit use and urban context.
Cantwell et al. [2] examined the level of stress caused by commuting into Dublin city
centre. It revealed that the commuters who spend long time for waiting for public
transport service tend to be more stressed. This occurs when the reliability of the bus
service is poor. Route length, headway, distance from stop to original terminal and
the use of exclusive bus lanes affect the service reliability as found by Chen et al.
[4]. Lyman and Bertini [16] tried to improve regional transportation planning and
operations using travel time reliability measures. Liu and Sinha [15] estimated some
of the measures to assess reliability of an urban bus network using microsimulation
model framework. It was observed that with increasing congestion and passenger
demand, reliability is reduced. Reduction in per passenger boarding time proves to
be an effective measure in improving reliability. Iseki et al. [11] studied the effects
of out-of-vehicle time on travel behaviour, and the findings were used to improve the
travel connectivity at the transit transfer points. Laura [13] and Lin et al. [14] used
new techniques, such as AVL and APC techniques, to collect data and measured
reliability, cause of unreliability and application of strategies to improve the service.
During early twenty-first century, Kimpel [12] analysed transit service reliability and
estimated passenger demand.
The reliability measure of a corridor is important for the operational efficiency of a
road. In the Indian context, it is important to enhance and maintain accessible, reliable
and affordable public transport services as mentioned by Badani and Haider [1] in
their work. The travel time reliability of urban arterial corridor in Delhi road network
was studied by Gopi et al. [10]. They used the reliability measures developed by
Federal Highway Administration (FHWA Report 2006) [9] to measure the reliability
of the arterial corridor at a different time of the day. Higher Planning Time Index (PTI)
and Buffer Index (BI) values during the morning peak hour of non-working days as
compared to morning peak hour of working days were obtained from their analysis.
Chalumuri et al. [3] also used the FHWA measures for estimating reliability of an
urban corridor and further used the microsimulation to determine the travel time
reliability. They also found out the influence of the demand side factors (such as
traffic flow, speed distribution vehicle composition, driver characteristics, etc.) and
supply-side factors (such as reserved lane for bus, lane closure, etc.) on the reliability
value (Reviewer 2).
In most of the previous literature, it is found that travel time reliability has been
considered to be the key indicator for the performance and health of a region’s
transportation system. Thus, in this article, the performance of the public transport
(especially buses) has been analysed using the methods of travel time reliability
measures. In the following sections, the methodology and the case study area has
been described. The reliability of the buses has been compared with that of the most
reliable mode of public transport in the same route, i.e. metro railway.
24 S. Sen et al.

3 Methodology

The metro railway is considered as the benchmark for the travel time reliability. The
estimated travel time reliability for all the modes is compared with that of the metro
railway. The comparison reveals the current situation of travel time reliability of all
the modes with respect to the metro railway.
The data collected from the on-board survey (the process is described in ‘Data
collection and Survey’ section later) was analysed in three categories. Initially, the
travel time reliability was estimated for each of the modes considering the method
used by Liu and Sinha [15]. They defined travel time reliability as the ratio of the
mean travel time to the standard deviation. The formula can be written as follows:
μ
RT = (1)
σ
where
μ is the mean travel time and
σ is the standard deviation of travel time.
The data collection and the calculations are easy for this method and hence have
been used in this study to estimate the reliability (Reviewer 1).
Second, the five standard measures developed by Federal Highway Administration
(FHWA Report 2006) [9] to determine the travel time reliability are also used here.
It is used in this study as it is a well-established method and has been used by many
researchers for estimating the route reliability (Reviewer 1). The parameters are
mentioned below.
95th Percentile Travel Time (T95 ). It denotes the travel time which is less than
or equal to 95% of sample travel times. Higher T95 means the variation in travel time
of the bus is high. This indicates less reliability.
Buffer Time (TB ). The difference between the 95th percentile travel time and the
mean travel time (μt ) is called the buffer time. This represents the extra time needed
to compensate for unexpected delays. The higher the buffer time for a passenger, the
less reliable is the mode of travel for that passenger.

TB = T95 − μt (2)

Buffer Index (Bi ). It is the ratio of buffer time to the mean travel time expressed in
terms of percentage. This indicates the extra percentage of time a trip maker should
add to his/her expected mean travel time to ensure on-time or earlier arrival to the
destination. The more the buffer index, the lower is the reliability.

TB
Bi = × 100% (3)
μt

Planning Time Index (Pi ). It is the ratio of the 95th percentile travel time to the
free-flow travel time expressed in terms of percentage. It compares the longest travel
Assessing Travel Time Reliability of Public Transport … 25

time against a travel time incurred by free-flow traffic. The higher the Pi , the less
reliable is the mode of travel. In the present study, free-flow travel time was obtained
by observing the travel time taken by a car to reach the destination from the origin
via the same route in the early morning hours. The free-flow speed is observed to be
1380 s for this present study.

T95
Pi = × 100% (4)
TF

Planning Time (Pt ). It is the summation of average/mean travel time and buffer
time. The higher the buffer time, the more will be the planning time and lesser there
liability of the mode.

Pt = μt + TB (5)

Finally, the reliability is also indicated with the help of the delay caused by trav-
elling in public buses. The more the delay, the less is the reliability. The different
types of delay focussed in this present study are as follows:
• Signal Delay: The vehicle stopping within a distance of 100 m from the ‘stop’ line
under the influence of signal which incurs the delay in the travel time is termed as
signal delay.
• Bus Stop Delay: These delays are attributed to boarding and alighting of individual
passengers at specified bus stops only.
• Waiting Delay: This includes any extra delay occurred due to unnecessary halt at
empty stoppages.
• Congestion Delay: Any delay caused by the congestion created due to the huge
volume of traffic during the peak hours.
Since the bus routes are the same, the number of signalised intersection encoun-
tered in a single trip is the same for all modes. So, in addition to congestion delay,
the travel time delay is dependent mostly on the bus stop delay and the waiting time
delay which will negatively affect the travel time reliability. A sensitivity analysis is
included in this study to understand and identify the delay that affects the travel time
reliability of a public bus.

4 Study Area

Kolkata is the third largest metropolitan city in India and the capital city of West
Bengal state. It has a huge population, mostly residing in the suburban regions.
Bansdroni Bazaar area is one such region in the southern part of Kolkata that generates
a significant amount of work trips to Park Street, a well-known commercial area in
the central part of Kolkata. Out of the various corridors connecting Bansdroni Bazaar
with Park Street, one corridor of about 10.5 km long is selected as the case study
due to the presence of metro railway all along the corridor (Fig. 1) in addition to the
26 S. Sen et al.

Fig. 1 Map showing the case study route from Bansdroni Bazaar to Park Street. Source Google
Map
Assessing Travel Time Reliability of Public Transport … 27

Table 1 Bus route characteristics under study

Bus route Bus operator Origin Destination Route segment
under study
A State Govt. Garia bus stand Howrah station Bansdroni bazar
to Park street
B State Govt. Garia bus stand Howrah station Bansdroni bazar
to Park street
C Private Bansdroni bazar Howrah station Bansdroni bazar
to Park street
D Private (minibus) Naktala bus stand Howrah station Bansdroni bazar
to Park street

different public modes of transport. This corridor consists of four busiest roads of
Kolkata. They are Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Road, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee
Road, Ashutosh Mukherjee Road and Jawaharlal Nehru Road. These roads are having
all types of modes of transport plying on Kolkata streets, namely, regular private and
government buses, private minibuses, three-wheeled auto-rickshaw, taxi/cabs and
private cars and motorised two wheelers along with other non-motorised modes.
A number of bus routes of various characteristics and different routes are plying
on the study corridor. Out of them, four bus routes have been considered for this
study as these four bus routes have a common segment in their route from Bansdroni
Bazar to Park Street. The other routes do not have such a long common route seg-
ment. Moreover, these four types of buses (i.e. Govt. AC, Govt. Non-AC, Ordinary
Private Non-AC and Private Minibus) mostly ply in the urban streets of Kolkata and
represents the public bus system of Kolkata (Reviewer 2).
A brief description of these bus routes is provided in Table 1. The survey procedure
and the data collected for analysis are discussed in the next section.

5 Data Collection and Survey

In this study, two state government buses (Route A and Route B), one private bus
(Route C), one mini private bus (Route D) and metro railway were selected. To
calculate the reliability measures (as mentioned in the ‘Methodology’ section), the
time taken by the buses of the aforesaid bus routes to travel from Bansdroni Bazar
to Park Street along the route (mentioned in ‘Study Area’) was observed. This travel
time is nothing but the running time of the buses between two consecutive bus stops
whose summation gives the total running time. Along with the travel time, different
delays such as signal delay, bus stop delay, waiting delay and congestion delay were
also noted using a stopwatch. AVL data [14] was not available to obtain these data,
hence, on-board technique was adopted. In this technique, an enumerator travelled
from Bansdroni Bazar to Park Street in a bus of the study routes and the different
28 S. Sen et al.

delay and travel time are noted down using a stopwatch. Since the study focuses
on the reliability of buses for work trips only, the morning peak hour was selected
for conducting the survey. Three buses of each bus route travelling between 9 and
10 am each day were randomly selected on any seven weekdays of a month. The
same procedure was carried out for metro railway as well. Free-flow travel time was
obtained by observing the time taken by a standard car to reach Park Street from
Bansdroni Bazar via the same route at 6 am for three consecutive weekdays and the
average is calculated. This is considered as the datum for free-flow travel time. There
is difference in the operational characteristics of car and bus but the free-flow travel
time cannot be extracted accurately from a bus because the drivers of the public buses
drive according to their own will and may not drive at a free-flow speed even if a
free-flow condition prevail in the road segment. Due to this reason mainly, free-flow
travel time was obtained by observing the travel time taken by a car to travel the
road segment under study during the early morning hours at a speed not more than
30 kmph to replicate the free-flow driving characteristics of a bus (Reviewer 2).

6 Results

6.1 Travel Time Reliability (RT) and Comparison

of Reliabilities of Bus with Metro Railway

The travel time reliability of the different modes is estimated using the expression
mentioned in Eq. 1. The expression indicated the variation of the travel time of public
buses from the average travel time of the bus. The higher the variation, the less will
be the RT value and vice versa. Thus in this context, the higher the RT value, the
more reliable is the mode. The RT value of the metro railway service has been set as
the benchmark and is compared with the other modes, i.e. the different buses under
study. The comparison of the reliability of different modes with that of the metro
railway is done by estimating the ratio of the RT of different modes to that of the
metro railway expressed in percentage. The average travel time and its deviation from
the average are also tabulated in Table 2 along with the RT values. This provides an
overview of the present condition of the public buses of the Kolkata region.
Table 2 shows that the average travel time of state government buses ranges from
40 to 45 min with a deviation of 6 to 7 min, which is comparable to the private
minibus (Route D) which has an average travel time of 47 min with a deviation of
9 min. But the travel time of private bus (Route C) is maximum with a mean of
64 min and a deviation of 12 min. These are compared with the metro railway which
has an average travel time of 23 min and a deviation of just 2 min. It is a typical
characteristic of the government-run buses that it will maintain the travel time with
minimum deviation from the average travel time. This increases the RT value and
makes it more reliable. On the other hand, private buses because of their operating
characteristics have a tendency to maximise the revenue earned from the passenger.
Assessing Travel Time Reliability of Public Transport … 29

Table 2 Comparison of travel time reliability of different buses with that of the metro railway
Bus route Average travel Standard Travel time Comparison of
time, μ (min)a deviation, σ reliability (RT) reliability of the
(min)a studied bus
routes w.r.t
reliability of
metro railway (in
%)
Route A 44 6 7.33 63.8
Route B 42 7 6.00 52.2
Route C 64 12 5.33 46.4
Route D 47 9 5.20 45.4
Metro railway 23 2 11.50 100b
a The values are rounded off to the next minute
b The RT value of metro railway is considered as benchmark and is assumed a value of 100%

Travel Time Reliability (RT)

14
11.5
Travel time reliability (RT)

12

10

8 7.33
6
6 5.33
5.2
4

0
State Govt. Bus (Route A) State Govt. Bus (Route B) Private Bus (Route C) PrivateMini Bus (Route D) Metro Railway
Modes

Fig. 2 Travel time reliability comparison among different modes

Due to this reason, the deviation from the average travel time is higher and the RT
value decreases. Comparing the above results with the travel time reliability of the
metro railway wherein it is found that the value of travel time reliability of Route
A and Route B buses is more than 50% of the value of metro railway travel time
reliability, whereas the same for Route C and Route D buses are less than 50%. The
Travel Time Reliability (RT) values of the different modes have been demonstrated
graphically in Fig. 2.

6.2 Travel Time Reliability Measure According to FHWA

The Federal Highway Administration developed some factors to measure the reli-
ability of a particular mode in FHWA Report 2006. The results obtained by using
Eqs. 2–5 are tabulated below. The 95th percentile travel time for each of the modes
are obtained from cumulative frequency curves.
30 S. Sen et al.

Table 3 Measure of travel time reliability parameters of different modes (by FHWA)
Mode 95th Buffer time, Buffer time Planning Planning
percentile TB (min) index, Bi (%) time index, time, Pt
travel time, Pi (in %) (min)
T95% (min)
Route A 52 9 20.45 226.1 52
Route B 49 7 16.66 213.04 49
Route C 81 17 26.56 352.17 81
Route D 60 13 27.66 260.87 60
Metro railway 24 2 8.70 104.35 24
*Free-flow speed is observed to be 23 min

From Table 3, it is evident that the 95th percentile travel time of the government
buses is around 50 min, whereas it is as high as 81 min for Route C which is the highest
with respect to all other modes. The buffer time is the extra time which a commuter
should include in his/her journey time so as to compensate any unexpected delay. A
mode is said to be reliable if the buffer time is less. In this context, it is evident from
Table 3 that the state government buses have a buffer time within 10 min, whereas
the buffer time of 17 min for the Route C buses is quite high. The higher the value
of planning time index indicates unreliable mode of transport, as a commuter has to
include these extra time while planning their journey time. Once the journey time
of passenger increases which finally forces the passengers to shift their mode, from
this analysis, it is evident that buses of Route C are teh most unreliable in nature and
of Route B have the highest reliability.

6.3 Delay Measurement

Apart from these two types of measure of reliability, delay measurement can also be
used to estimate the reliability. Deviations from the scheduled departure time and the
delay in transit are the two broad categories in which the total delay can be classified.
The in-transit delay can be classified as signal delay, bus stop delay, congestion delay
and waiting delay. Referring to Table 4, it is clearly evident that the Route A has
the maximum starting time delay which is followed by Route C. On the other hand,
the delay in transit is maximum for Route C which is followed by the Route B. If
the in-transit delay is compared to the total travel time of the different modes, it is
observed that the transit delay of 29 and 15 min make up 30–45% of the total travel
time for Route C, whereas the government buses have a transit delay within 20 min
which comprises 25–40% of the total travel time.
The delays in transit are separately shown in the bar chart which compares the
different delays for the different buses. The figure is shown (Fig. 3).
Due to heavy traffic movement during the peak hours, congestion on the road
network in Kolkata is a major issue that deviates the actual travel time from the
Assessing Travel Time Reliability of Public Transport … 31

Table 4 Comparison of the delays

Type of delays Route A Route B Route C Route D
min % min % min % min %
Starting time delay from scheduled time 15 – 7 – 13 – 10 –
Delay in transit
Signal delay 5 47 7 45 8 28 6 43
Bus stop delay 2 17 4 21 6 19 4 25
Congestion delay 3 28 5 28 11 39 4 26
Waiting delay 1 8 1 6 4 14 1 6
Total delay in transit and its share in total 11 25 17 41 29 45 15 32
transit time

scheduled travel time. These congestions sometimes are created by the bus drivers
himself due to unnecessarily waiting for the passengers not only at the scheduled
stoppages but also in between the scheduled stoppages and sometimes the bus
drivers willingly get on the congested side of the road. This driving behaviour is
persistent in private buses of Route C more than the other buses. These influence
the travel time to a great extent. The graph in Fig. 3 shows that all the delays for
buses of Route A are less than all other buses in that route. On the other hand, buses
of Route C have the maximum delays in transit among all the modes. Among all
the types of delay, signal delay has the maximum share in all the modes which is
followed by congestion delay. Observing all the results, it can be clearly stated that
private buses of Route C have the least reliability among all the modes. The state
government buses show better reliability among the buses.

Comparison of the delays in transit Signal delay Bus Stop delay

CongesƟon delay WaiƟng Delay
12 11
10
8
Delay in minutes

8 7
6 6
6 5 5
4 4 4 4
4 3
2
2 1 1 1
0
State Govt. Bus (Route A) State Govt. Bus (Route B) Private Bus (Route C) Private Mini Bus (Route D)
Modes

Fig. 3 Comparison of the delays in transit

32 S. Sen et al.

6.4 Sensitivity Analysis

The analysis shows that the most reliable mode of public transport in this route is
the metro railways. The buses have a very low reliability as compared to that of the
metro railways. As metro railway has a separate right of way, the in-transit delay
is negligible, whereas the buses face delay during the transit as it travels through
a heterogeneous traffic stream. A sensitivity analysis was carried out to determine
the effect of congestion delay and the waiting delay of the buses on its travel time
reliability. Table 5 shows the RT using modified average travel time and standard
deviation of buses if there was no congestion or waiting delay, i.e. zero minutes
of congestion delay and waiting delay. The RT is compared with that of the metro
railway.
Table 5 shows that the reliability of buses can be improved if the congestion and
waiting delay can be minimised. The modified RT value of state government buses
(RT of buses of Route A: 9.75 and RT of buses of Route B: 7.60) increased by
one-third of the actual value. Buses of Route C have the maximum improvement of
66% which may be attributed to the fact that the delay of buses of Route C mostly
comprises congestion delay and waiting delay and has a high impact on the overall
travel time reliability. In case of Route D buses, the modified value increased to 6.83
which shows an improvement of 31% from the actual RT. In comparison to the metro
railway, the RT of buses of Route B and Route C increased by almost 15%. On the
other hand, buses of Route A increased by 21% and the maximum improvement of
30% occurred in buses of Route C.

Table 5 Effect of congestion and waiting delay on RT

Mode Modified Modified Travel time reliability (RT) Comparison of RT of all the
average stan- different modes under study with
travel dard RT of metro railway (in %)
time, μ devia- Actual Modified Improvement Actual Modified Improvement
(min) tion, σ (%) (%)
(min)
Route A 39 4 7.33 9.75 33 63.8 84.8 21
Route B 38 5 6.00 7.60 27 52.2 66 13.8
Route C 53 6 5.33 8.83 66 46.4 76.8 30.4
Route D 41 6 5.20 6.83 31 45.4 60 14.6
Metro 11.50 –
railway
Assessing Travel Time Reliability of Public Transport … 33

7 Conclusion and Discussion

The present study is focused on the travel time reliability of public transport in
Kolkata. The public transports included in this study are two state government buses,
private bus, private minibus and metro railway all running along the same route. The
reliability of all these modes is estimated using the method proposed by Liu and
Sinha [15]. As per Liu and Sinha, the higher the RT value, the more reliable is the
mode. The analysis showed that the RT value ranges from 5 to 7.5 which is low as
compared to the RT of metro railway (11.50) as mentioned in Table 2.
The parameters developed by FHWA in the FHWA Report 2006 to measure the
reliability were also used here to determine important reliability parameters like
buffer time, buffer time index, planning time index and planning time (Table 3). A
buffer time of more than 14 min was estimated for private bus and minibus and below
10 min for state government buses are quite high as compared to 2 min buffer time of
metro railway. All these results showed that the public buses, especially the private
bus (Route C), are having the least reliable service.
Finally, the delay measurement shows that the buses face a high signal and con-
gestion delay during the peak hour. Figure 3 reveals the comparison of delay in transit
for all the buses under study. From the figure, it is shown that all the types of delay
are high for private bus (Route C). Sometimes, these delays are incurred intentionally
by some bus drivers which is a common behaviour of many of the bus drivers. This
delay increases the travel time of the buses which ultimately reveals the poor service
reliability of the buses in Kolkata. The high unreliability of buses, in terms of travel
time, is pushing commuters to choose private vehicles as their mode of transport
which increases traffic volume and congestion on the road.
The sensitivity analysis shows that if the in-transit delay can be minimised when
the reliability of the buses improves by more than 30% on an average with the private
bus (Route C) having the maximum improvement (Table 5). It is of utmost importance
to improve the reliability of the buses in order to restrict the shift of the mode choice to
private vehicles. This will not only minimise the environmental degradation but also
help to control and manage the traffic flow on the roadway networks more efficiently.
In this study, the main focus is on the public buses, but the metro railway is set as
benchmark for comparison. Further research can be done by including other modes
of transport like para-transit, etc. Moreover, only one route is selected as the case
study route. This may be applied to other significant routes of Kolkata as well and
compared with the present study.

References

1. Badani MG, Haider M (2007) An analysis of public bus transit performance in Indian cities.
Transp Res Part A 961–981
2. Cantwell M, Caulfield B, OMahony M (2009) Examining the factors that impact public trans-
port commuting satisfaction. J Public Trans 12(2)
34 S. Sen et al.

3. Chalumuri RS, Errampalli M, Gangopadhyay S (2013) Analysis of travel time reliability of an

urban corridor using micro simulation techniques. Curr Sci 105(3):2013
4. Chen X, Lei Yu, Zhang Y, Guo J (2009) Analysing urban bus service reliability at the stop,
route and network levels. Transp Res Part A 43:722–734
5. Chien S, Liu X (2012) An investigation of measurement for travel time variability. In: Rahim
AA (ed) Intelligent transportation system, In Tech. ISBN 978-953-51-0347-9
6. Diab E, EI-Genedy AM (2013) Variation in bus transit service understanding the impacts of var-
ious improvement strategies on transit service reliability. Public Trans Plann Oper 4(3):209–231
7. Diana M (2012) Measuring the satisfaction of multimodal travellers for local transit services
in different urban contexts. Transp Res Part A 46:1–11
8. Ebeling CE (1997) An introduction to reliability and maintainability engineering. McGraw-Hill
9. FHWA. Travel time reliability: making it there on time, all the time. www.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/
publications/tt_reliability/TTR_Report.htm. Accessed 14 July 2007
10. Gopi P, Sachdeva SN, Bharati AK (2014) Evaluation of travel time reliability on urban arterial.
Int J Eng Res Technol. 3(6). ISSN 2278-0181
11. Iseki H, Taylor BD, Miller M (2006) The effects of out-of vehicle on travel behaviour: impli-
cations for transit transfers. Institute of Transportation Studies
12. Kimpel TJ (2001) Time pont-level analysis of transit service reliability and passenger demand.
Portland State University
13. Laura CC (2006) Understanding bus service reliability: a practical frame work using AVL/APC
data. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
14. Lin J, Peng W, Darold TB (2007) A quality control framework for bus schedule reliability.
Trans Res Part E
15. Liu R, Sinha S (2007) Modelling urban bus service and passenger reliability. Institute for
Transport Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
16. Lyman K, Bertini RL (2008) Using travel time reliability measures to improve regional trans-
portation planning and operations. In: 87th annual meeting of the transportation research board,
13–17 January
17. Tony M (2013) Prioritizing public transit for speed, reliability and rider satisfaction. The Ger-
man Marshall fund of the United States