In recent years, a considerable amount of money has been spent on ITS projects for public transportation, most notably the real-time transit information systems. Strikingly few studies to date have been completed to investigate empirically the effects of deploying such a system. This paper examines the effects of real-time transit information on travelers behavior and psychology. The 2006-07 University of Maryland campus transportation panel survey data were used to examine how travelers responded to ShuttleTrac, a newly implemented real-time bus arrival information system for the university's shuttle system. Two fixed-effects models and five random-effects ordered probit models were estimated to sort out causal relations between ShuttleTrac information use and two behavioral and five psychological indicators respectively. We find real-time information use significantly increased rider's feeling of security about riding bus after dark and boostedtheir overall satisfaction level. However, it was not found to significantly increase traveler's shuttle trip frequency, at least in the short term, perhaps due to the lack of enough adjusting time. These results suggest that although transit agencies and scholars should not be too optimistic about achieving immediate ridership increase by providing real-time information to travelers, they can expect positive psychological responses from transit riders.
Abstract