Impacts of real-time transit information on transit accessibility – A case study

Transit service accessibility improvement is an important topic among transit planners and policymakers. Real-time transit information (RTI) sharing with the users has several benefits, such as lower wait time at the transit stops and higher transit accessibility. Previous studies assessed the benefits of RTI sharing mostly by analyzing the survey data and simulation-based studies. This study used field trip GPS data to quantify the transit stop wait time reduction in the presence of RTI sharing. A smartphone app was developed in this study to disseminate RTI to the users (i.e., location, speed, weather, and road condition information). The trip data showed that the average reduction of transit stop wait time after the RTI use was about three minutes on a selected transit route in Morgantown, WV. The calculated coverage area improvement indicates that the network-level stop coverage can be increased by 37 % with the use of RTI. The reduced wait time at transit stops reduced the average trip time, and riders can walk from further distances to reach the transit stops. The findings of this study justify more widescale use of the RTI sharing in an urban and rural environment.