Use of public transport delays data for decision making support

By project REFOCUS

Published on 13 December 2024

Ukraine

Lviv

About this good practice

The main problem in the city of Lviv is the oversaturation of private transport. In order to encourage people to shift from cars to public transport (PT) (thus reducing emissions) it is crucial to be competitive on commute speed. Therefore, there is a need to identify the locations and times of where and when delays in public transport operations happen..In this practice, General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data are collected and processed with the use of a standardised methodology that delivers information comparable in time and geographical locations available for presentation in the form of maps and graphs. Results of yearly monitoring are published as 3 separate map layers on municipal open data portal with regular updates. The information concerns delays in the public transport operation.This data is subsequently used for the road safety commission, which decides on changes (such as PT priority measures, changes of direction of streets adjacent to bus route and changes to traffic light timing) taking into account the data available. The owner of this practice is the Department for Urban Mobility and Street Infrastructure of the Lviv City Council. The main stakeholders in this process are Lviv Communal Enterprise ( LCE) “Lvivavtodor”, public transport operators, as well as the MI City Institute.

Resources needed

For yearly update on municipal public transport network one person month is needed, for monitoring of specific locations the workload is up to 2 person days to gather, process data and to prepare results for decisionmakers / general public.

Evidence of success

Data allowed to spot delays on more than 60 PT routes of Lviv and forecast potential improvements, as well as verify efficiency of interventions aiming to improve speed of PT in the city (with no less than 5 separate studies performed each year). At the moment, multiple improvements were justified, some of them leading up to 20min of travel time saved for PT users in each trip.

Potential for learning or transfer

Data allowed to spot delays on more than 60 PT routes of Lviv and forecast potential improvements, as well as verify efficiency of interventions aiming to improve speed of PT in the city (with no less than 5 separate studies performed each year). At the moment, multiple improvements were justified, some of them resulting in up to 20min of travel time saved for PT users in each trip.