Paper Details

TRB 91st Annual Meeting (January 22-26, 2012)

Event Number:	447
Event Title:	Explorations in Transit Management, Performance, and Funding
Event Date:	Jan 23 2012 7:30PM- 9:30PM
Event Location:	Hilton, International East
Event Description:
Event Agenda:

Balanced Approach to Normalizing Bus Operational Data for Performance Benchmarking (12-0735)

Peer organizations in a performance benchmarking group are usually carefully selected based on similar characteristics such as the type of services offered, operational characteristics and density of the service area. These similarities enable organizations to compare performance once their operational data are normalized. The most commonly used normalization factors for the demand side output are passenger boardings and passenger kilometres. For the supply side output these are vehicle kilometres and vehicle hours. Through seven years of experience in the International Bus Benchmarking Group (IBBG) a better understanding of differences in service characteristics between ‘similar’ peers has been achieved. It became clear that relative performance can often not be concluded from a performance indicator normalized in one dimension. Variety in commercial speed, trip length, vehicle capacity, vehicle weight and network efficiency results in the need for a multi dimensional or balanced approach to data normalization. This paper quantifies the variety within these operational characteristics and provides a framework for benchmarking practitioners and policymakers that suggests applicable combinations of denominators for a balanced normalization process. This paper further describes how alternative normalization factors such as revenue service planning capacity kilometres and total tonne kilometres have improved comparability of key performance indicators.

Authors
     Trompet, Mark , Imperial College London, United Kingdom
     Graham, Daniel J., Imperial College London, United Kingdom