The Run-Times product is a powerful scheduling tool that compares observed (actual) run-times against your agency's scheduled run-time for every trip in your schedule. This data is then used to analyze and compare observed run times across periods of time, and even suggests run times that might be better suited to your system's operations.
Video Overview
The Basics
Summary: View your agency's historical run-time information in multiple formats and layouts. Understand whether trips are running according to their scheduled run-time, compare run-times between two different date ranges, and see how suggested run-times could improve your scheduling operations.
Filters: In the Run-Times product, you can view a summary of run time accuracy across your service, or hone in on a specific route's run-times. This information can be viewed for a single day, but for most analysis, we recommend selecting multiple weeks or months so as to generate a sufficient sample size. You may want to choose dates that align with a specific schedule pick or season, for example. You can even exclude specific dates that may impact run-times (snow days, holidays, events that disrupt service, etc.).
The filters will vary slightly between the three views in the Run-Times product. In most views, though, you will be able to specify which trip pattern that you are analyzing or adjust allowable minutes for early and late vehicles. Otherwise, other filter information will be explained in the specific view articles linked below.
View high-level run-times data – When you select the "All Routes" filter, you can see your agency's system-wide level performance for the time-window selected. This view shows you an overview of whether your routes are running shorter, longer, or "expected" as compared to their scheduled run-times. This high-level view essentially serves as a report card on the accuracy of your scheduling, and also as a quick way to identify routes that may be especially problematic and worthy of more attention.
Analysis: Click on any route in the overview page (or select it from the Filters panel) to view run-times data for each trip on that specific route. If you'd like to see trip-level details, click on any trip to see run-times data between stops for a single trip in the schedule.
Analysis views display captured trips: all trips with an observed first stop departure, a last stop arrival, and are completed by a single vehicle, regardless of whether any mid-trip stops were observed.
Both the route- and trip- level reports are available in three views:
- Components (described above) – the median breakdown of shortest observed travel time, variable travel time, and dwell.
- Distribution – shows a distribution of the overall run times recorded during this time period.
- Percentile – sorts the distribution into 10th, 50th, and 90th percentile breakdowns. These percentiles are customizable from the gear icon in the upper-right corner.
Distribution and Percentile views allow users to see the spread of their running times, rather than the median values shown in the Components view. This is critically important for gaining information into the feasibility of improving the schedule on a given route, as routes with consistent running times will generally be easier to schedule. In general, users may prefer to use the distribution view except when looking at large sample sizes, where the percentile view can offer a more condensed summary.
Comparison View: The Comparison tab allows you to compare, side-by-side, the observed run times of two different time frames for the same route. This is great for comparing:
- Impacts of specific events as compared to the norm
- Negative impact of construction along a route path
- Positive impact of transit infrastructure, bus-only lanes, or signal priority projects
- Variances between different days of the week
Suggestion: The Suggestion view uses data referenced from the Analysis and Comparison views to generate suggested run-times that may improve on-time performance for a route. This view compares the potential on-time performance of your existing scheduled run-times with Swiftly's suggested run-times. OTP values for both current and suggested run times assume that vehicles always depart the first stop on-time.
Learn more about how Suggested Run Times are calculated by Swiftly here or click the "i" (information) icon in the upper-right portion of the dashboard screen.
Export your data: You can easily export the underlying Suggested Run-TImes data in our dashboard to CSV so you can merge with other data sets or run your own analyses.
The analysis view includes both trips with complete data (complete trips) as well as trips with enough data that Swiftly can infer the run-times (incomplete trips). Captured trips represent the set of complete trips + included incomplete trips. The suggestion and comparison views only include complete trips.
Complete Trip: A trip observation that has an arrival or departure observed for every scheduled stop and:
- The stop observations are in order (each arrival or departure time is greater than or equal to the one for the previous stop)
- The observed departure time for the stop is greater than or equal to the observed arrival time of the stop
Incomplete Trip/Partial Trip: A trip observation that is missing both an arrival and departure for at least one stop.
- If an arrival or departure is observed for every stop, but in the wrong order, the trip will still be considered “incomplete” in the Run-Times product, and it will not be available in the trip-level analysis views.
- Paths from the stops that were observed on the trip will be available in the single trip analysis views (path-observations and path-stats).
Captured Trip: A trip with an observed first stop departure, last stop arrival, and was completed by a single vehicle. Regardless of whether the mid-trip stops are observed, the trip will be available in the trip-level analysis views.
- Paths from the stops that were observed on the trip will be available in the single trip analysis views.
Take Run-Times Beyond the Basics
Swiftly Customer use cases:
- Baltimore Develops a Golden Method for Transit Signal Priority
- Swiftly Restores Transit Calm on the Oregon Coast
Customer Community Training Webinars:
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