Measurement Valuation of Public Transport Reliability

Public transit reliability is important for both passengers and operators. Reliability can affect riders in one of two ways: (1) delay when picking up the passenger and (2) delay when the passenger is on the service. Measures of reliability are generally utilized within performance regimes to evaluate the quality of service of public transit providers. This research, undertaken out in 2007, tries to find a method of measuring the value placed on public transit reliability in different contexts in New Zealand. A stated preference survey was designed and implemented to collect information about riders’ current public transit usage, their attitudes to reliability and how they valued reliability. Four initial models were estimated using these stated preference surveys: a disaggregate model, a mean model, a variance model and a mean-variance model. The preferred approach, based on comparability to international measures and ease of use, was the mean delay model. A value of time was determined from the departure stated preference survey. Values of time ranged around $8/hour. The surveys also found that rail transit riders consistently had a value of time almost twice that of bus transit riders, which is consistent with international findings.