Transit ITS has three components: (1) metropolitan, (2) rural, and (3) the Intelligent Vehicle Initiative. The metropolitan component focuses on urban and suburban transportation in the areas of Traveler Information, Transit Management, and Electronic Payment. The rural Transit ITS component addresses these same areas but emphasizes rural area applications. The Intelligent Vehicle Initiative pertains to automating transit vehicle control and safety systems.
A state-of-the-practice was conducted to determine the use of data archived from transit ITS technologies. A growing number of transit service providers are using Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and/or computer aided dispatch (CAD) systems to better manage their bus operations. These systems help to circumvent traffic congestion and to meet passengers’ demand for more reliable service. Beyond the area of operations control, AVL technology holds great promise for improving service planning, scheduling, and performance analysis practices. In particular, AVL systems can collect substantial amounts of operating data at the spatial and temporal scales that are required for performance analysis. In addition, Automatic Passenger Counters (APCs) can collect and archive passenger activity data that are compatible with AVL operating data.
One hundred and ninety-six transit agencies responded to the 1999 Transit Management Survey. Table 7.1 demonstrates the propensity of data archiving by transit agencies. One in every three transit agencies did not archive any data collected (the “0" column), while more than one in every three archived all data collected (cells on the diagonal line).
Table 7.1 Distribution of Transit Agencies by Number of Data Elements Collected and Number of Data Elements Archived 1999 ITS Deployment Survey |
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Number of Data Elements Collected |
Transit Management Survey (138 agencies responded to questions pertinent to data archiving) |
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Number of Data Elements Archived |
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17 |
16 |
15 |
14 |
13 |
12 |
11 |
10 |
9 |
8 |
7 |
6 |
5 |
4 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
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17 |
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16 |
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15 |
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1 |
14 |
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13 |
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12 |
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1 |
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1 |
1 |
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11 |
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1 |
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1 |
10 |
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1 |
2 |
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1 |
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1 |
9 |
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1 |
2 |
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1 |
3 |
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8 |
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2 |
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1 |
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1 |
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3 |
7 |
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2 |
1 |
1 |
3 |
2 |
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2 |
6 |
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7 |
1 |
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1 |
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4 |
5 |
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5 |
3 |
2 |
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4 |
4 |
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1 |
11 |
3 |
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1 |
5 |
3 |
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11 |
3 |
1 |
5 |
2 |
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6 |
2 |
6 |
1 |
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