Communicating delays and adjusted disposition timetables: Modelling and evaluating the impact of incomplete information to passengers

Abstract

When delays occur in public transport systems, operating companies update the planned timetable to the actual disturbed conditions. Passengers face an adjusted service; the corrective actions (a disposition timetable) are disseminated by the operating companies as service (or route) information. Different from the common assumption of complete, correct and immediate information, we consider the case when passengers have incomplete information, and study the resulting effects on passengers’ route choice and delays in their beliefs and in reality. We model information and passengers’ route choices on a public transport network based on a Belief-Desire-Intention model. On an illustrative realistic test case, we evaluate different types of information in their completeness (perfect or on-route) and correctness (passengers extrapolating future unknown operation times by schedule-extension or delay-propagation). We analyse the feasibility (a promised transfer not taking place) and optimality (i.e. other choices would have led to a shorter travel time in reality). In case of perfect information, the delays are the least, but the effects of passengers’ expectations about future operations the highest, compared to on-route information. Schedule-extension causes fewer passengers’ delays when information is available only for a short time ahead; otherwise, delay-propagation is better.