ABSTRACT
Service reliability in transit operations has been receiving increasing attention as agencies become faced more and more with the immediate problem of providing credible service while attempting to reduce operating costs. Unreliable service has been cited as the major deterrent to existing and potential passengers. For example, Balcombe et al. (2004), in a U.K. practical-transit guide, report that passengers’ perception of local bus services is interpretedin the following ranking of importance in weights (given here in parenthesis) that add up to 100: reliability (34), frequency (17), vehicles (14), driver behavior (12), routes (11), fares (7), and information (5). In other words, for instance, it is twice as important from a passenger’s perspective to improve reliability as to increase the frequency of service.
