A simulation-based reliability assessment approach for congested transit network

This paper is an attempt to develop a generic simulation-based approach to assess transit service reliability, taking into account interaction between network performance and passengers' route choice behaviour. Three types of reliability, say, system wide travel time reliability, schedule reliability and direct boarding waiting-time reliability are defined from perspectives of the community or transit administration, the operator and passengers. A Monte Carlo simulation approach with a stochastic user equilibrium transit assignment model embedded is proposed to quantify these three reliability measures of transit service. A simple transit network with a bus rapid transit (BRT) corridor is analysed as a case study where the impacts of BRT components on transit service reliability are evaluated preliminarily.