IH02-Timothy Manglicmot
From IEOR 170 Spring 2007
Contents |
[edit] Problem Description
This paper outlines improvements in design to existing AC Transit and Campus Transit Bus Stops at UC Berkeley. The focus of this paper is how to improve Bus Stops to provide riders in and around the UC Berkeley campus a better awareness of how long to wait at a bus stop. Students typically use the bus to travel to classes otherwise too far to walk or to travel to destinations close to the UC Berkeley campus (e.g. Safeway). Delays in bus arrival can translate to missed classes or high opportunity costs in terms of time. By having an improved schedule for bus arrival students should be able plan their valuable time accordingly.
[edit] Target User Group
The target group for my design project is UC Berkeley Students with AC Transit Passes. This graphic comprises 100% of all fully registered students. Additionally, students can be discernible by having a student ID card and are abundant in and around the UC Berkeley Campus.
[edit] Analysis
[edit] Survey
After surveying 10 random student-bus riders and asking “how can the city improve its Bus Stops?” Some of the most frequent responses/problems/comments were as follows:
- “I check the time of when the bus is supposed to come (online), but I always end up missing the bus anyways.”
- “The buses never seem to follow the schedule on the bus stop!”
- “I arrive at the bus stop, check the schedule, and leave because I figure I can walk to class faster…but when I start walking and am between bus stops, a bus always comes and I end up chasing after it.”
[edit] Problem Context and Forces
- The time on the AC Transit schedule does not align perfectly with the common student’s time. Because the AC Transit bus arrival is by-the-minute, having the correct time is critical.
- Students do not know if the next scheduled bus to arrive has come or gone.
- Mike Mills, an AC Transit Spokesman, says current AC reports estimate a 75 percent on-time rate. This means that although students arrive at the bus stop at the proposed time, the bus won’t arrive as expected 25 percent of the time.
- This statistic is based on the findings of 53 traffic checkers, deployed every three months to monitor schedule adherence from bus stops.
- Buses can be delayed by "uncontrollable variables:" traffic, weather, unruly passengers or people in wheelchairs
- Current schedules should be redesigned with time intervals rather than specific times for bus arrival.
[edit] Improvements Already in Place
- SATCOM2000
- Used to track bus locations and automatically tabulate on-time performance.
- AC will discard traditional timetable and replace them with the “headway system,” using up to the minute time intervals available online for scheduling.
- NextBus
- Contractor which transmits the arrival of 35 buses to its web site
- Used to track the buses on real-time maps
[edit] Design Details
[edit] Current Design
[edit] Proposed Design
- Users can see the standard time the buses use by viewing the digital clock built into the bus schedule.
- The digital clock will have a solar panel similar to calculators to help power the clock.
- The design schedule will use arrival-time intervals rather than specified arrival times to help account for the variance in arrival and departure time.
- Arrival-time intervals will benchmark off of the normal distribution of arrival times. For example, following a normal distribution, if a bus usually arrives at 9:30 AM with a standard deviation of 1 min, AC Transit officials can confidently say the bus will arrive 99.7% of the time between 9:27 AM – 9:33 AM.
- The bus schedule design will have the same column-like layout as the previous design as this is fairly easy to follow.
- The bus schedule will have the same bolding for PM times, and non-bolding for AM times.
