A Development of Punctuality Index for Bus Operation and Analysis of its Characteristics

Punctuality of bus operation can be defined as "timely operation of buses according to their operation schedules." It tis often considered as one of the important measures of bus operation reliability in evaluating bus operation performance from the viewpoint of bus users. Passenger waiting times are severely influenced by the punctuality of bus operations. However, there exist many situations that predetermined schedules cannot be met. In these cases, other definitions of punctuality should be given. This paper is to develop punctuality indexes of bus operation based on various bus operating situations. Bus operation data sampled from Seoul bus system were analyzed to calculate punctuality indexes for a number of bus routes. Then, bus operation punctuality was characterized by various operating conditions. Several interesting results were obtained and explained.