Effect of Fare Policies on Dwell Time: Case Study for the Pittsburgh Region

Bus fares may be collected when passengers board or immediately before they alight. Little work has been done to quantify the impacts of entry fare and exit fare policies on passenger stop delay, namely the dwell time. The Port Authority of Allegheny County (PAAC), Pennsylvania, is one of few mass transit systems to currently employ both entry fare and exit fare policies. PAAC’s alternating fare policy offers an ideal natural experiment for investigating the effect of fare collection policy on dwell time. PAAC automated passenger counter and automatic vehicle location data were analyzed to estimate dwell time under no fare collection and entry fare and exit fare policies. The study found that the choice of fare policy can significantly affect the dwell time associated with fare payment but also that the effect of fare policy varies with route characteristics. The findings suggest that a transit system that seeks to minimize the contribution of fare payment to total trip dwell time may be most effective by operating an entry fare policy on local routes with frequent stops and evenly distributed ridership and an exit fare policy on express and bus rapid transit routes with fewer stops and substantial passenger movements at major stops.