Business Requirements for APC
Submitted by James Kemp, PMP
Mail comments to: jkemp@njtransit.com
Required:
1. The system shall provide correct stop, pattern and trip association
1.1. The system shall automatically associate observed stop events with the correct stop ID in greater than 99% of all cases where the observed stop corresponds with a stop location known to the agency
1.2. The system shall automatically associate observed stop events with the correct pattern ID in greater than 98% of all cases where the vehicle is operating on a service pattern known to the agency
1.3. The system shall automatically associate observed stop events with the correct trip ID in greater than 95% of all cases where the vehicle is operating on a scheduled trip
1.4. Except as noted in 1.5 below, the system shall automatically and correctly determine whether respective boardings and alightings should be associated with the current trip, or the next trip, as appropriate, in greater than 95% of all cases where the vehicle is serving two overlapping trips at once (e.g. where the vehicle loops at the end of the line and passengers board toward the end of one trip in anticipation of alighting during the subsequent trip, or ride past the end of one trip to alight toward the beginning of another)
1.6. The system shall automatically and correctly associate respective boardings and alightings with the correct fare zone
1.6.1. The system shall automatically and correctly associate respective boardings and alightings with the correct fare zone at all identified stops
1.6.2. The system shall automatically and correctly associate respective boardings and alightings with the correct fare zone at greater than 95% of all unidentified stops on identified service patterns
2. The system shall provide users with accurate service output (passenger-miles) information
2.1. The system shall provide users with trip-level passenger-mile information with less than 5 percent error for greater than 95% of all trips.
2.2. The system shall provide users with trip-level passenger-mile information with less than 10 percent error for greater than 99% of all trips.
3. The system shall provide users with accurate service utilization (ridership) information
3.1. The system shall provide users with accurate boarding and alighting counts
3.1.1. The system shall provide users with stop-level boarding counts with less than 10 percent error at greater than 90% of all stops.
3.1.2. The system shall provide users with stop-level alighting counts with less than 10 percent error at greater than 90% of all stops.
3.1.3. The system shall provide users with stop-level boarding counts with less than 15 percent error at greater than 95% of all stops.
3.1.4. The system shall provide users with stop-level alighting counts with less than 15 percent error at greater than 95% of all stops.
3.1.5. The system shall provide users with stop-level boarding counts with less than 20 percent error at greater than 99% of all stops.
3.1.6. The system shall provide users with stop-level alighting counts with less than 20 percent error at greater than 99% of all stops.
3.2. The system shall provide users with pullout-level boarding and alighting counts with less than 2 percent bias (difference) between total boarding counts and total alighting counts for greater than 99% of all pullouts.
3.3. The system shall provide users with accurate capacity utilization information
3.3.1. The system shall provide users with stop-level passenger load information (passengers on board) with less than 10 percent error at greater than 95% of all stops
3.3.2. The system shall provide users with stop-level passenger load information (passengers on board) with less than 15 percent error at greater than 99% of all stops
3.3.3. The system shall provide users with accurate percent planned capacity utilization information (passengers on board / scheduled vehicle capacity) at all stops
3.3.4. The system shall provide users with accurate percent actual capacity utilization information (passengers on board / actual vehicle capacity) at all stops
Verification strategy for data association, service utilization and service output accuracy: Install cameras to record control counts; use Geographical Information System with accurate base map to determine control mileages between stops, manually observe vehicle odometer at start and end of each trip to validate control mileages; collect a minimum of 2000 counts while operating vehicles in normal service during peak periods in both cold and hot environments and under both dark and bright lighting conditions; establish control counts for each stop as the average of not less than three independent manual observations of the recorded camera images for each stop; compare APC data to control counts at each stop to verify that all passenger count and passenger load accuracy requirements have been met; compare APC data to control counts and control mileage at end of each trip to verify that passenger-mile accuracy requirement has been met; compare APC stop, pattern and trip attribution with actual.
4. The system shall identify and exclude unusable data records
4.1. The system shall identify and exclude from reporting greater than 99.99% of data records unusable due to onboard clock errors, with less than a 0.01% false alarm rate
4.2. The system shall identify and exclude from reporting greater than 99.99% of data records unusable due to GPS coordinate or fix quality errors, with less than a 0.01% false alarm rate
4.3. The system shall identify and exclude from reporting greater than 99.99% of data sets that are missing data records, with less than a 0.01% false alarm rate
4.4. The system shall identify and exclude from reporting all trips having both a passenger count discrepancy (difference between boardings and alightings) greater than a user configurable absolute discrepancy threshold (typically 5 passengers) and a percent count discrepancy greater than a user configurable percent discrepancy threshold (typically 5%)
4.5. The system shall identify and exclude from reporting greater than 99% of trip samples with incorrectly identified service patterns, with less than a 1% false alarm rate
4.6. The system shall identify and exclude from reporting greater than 95% of incorrectly identified trips, with less than a 2% false alarm rate
4.7. The system shall identify and exclude from summary reporting greater than 99.9% of incomplete trip samples, with less than a 1% false alarm rate
5. The system shall provide users with accurate running time information
6. The system shall provide users with accurate scheduled recovery time utilization information
7. The system shall provide users with accurate schedule deviation information (on-time performance)
7.1. The system shall provide users with accurate on-time performance information (percentage of timepoints departed within 1, 3, 5, 7, more than 7, and less than (-1) minutes of scheduled time).
8. The system shall provide users with accurate vehicle location information
8.1. The system shall provide users with vehicle location information accurate to within 50 feet at greater than 99% of stops with GPS availability.
8.2. The system shall provide users with vehicle location information accurate to within 200 feet at greater than 90% of stops at which GPS is not available
9. The system shall provide users with accurate vehicle mileage information
10. The system shall provide users with accurate engine-hour information
11. The system shall provide users with accurate engine idle hour information
12. The system shall provide users with an “APC sample distribution” report showing the number of scheduled trips and number of sampled trips for each garage, for each service type, for each route, for each time of day, for each schedule pick, in both tabular and graphical forms.
13. The system shall provide users with a map display showing scheduled stop locations, actual stop locations, magnitude of boarding and alighting counts at each stop, vehicle speed, planned route of travel and actual path traveled for any user-selected vehicle trip(s) on any user-selected vehicle pullout
14. The system shall provide users with a concise “single trip analysis” report, typically less than or equal to 2 pages in length, showing for a given user-selected trip sample:
14.1. route identification, pattern identification, scheduled trip time, scheduled running time, actual running time, pattern direction (inbound, outbound), schedule pick, run number and block number
14.2. sample date, day of week, schedule type
14.3. vehicle identification, operator ID (if available),
14.4. boardings, alightings, stop description (on street, at street), passengers on board, fare zone attribution and number of standees for each stop, locations of wheelchair lift activations, and scheduled time and schedule deviation at each timepoint, in both graphical and tabular forms,
14.5. passengers on board and number of registered fares from each origin fare zone crossing each fare zone boundary (if available from fare collection system)
14.6. scheduled recovery time and actual recovery time utilization at start and end of trip,
14.7. total boardings, total alightings, maximum load, maximum load point, average passenger trip length, average passenger standing time, scheduled trip mileage and actual trip mileage
14.8. scheduled headway (time between this trip and the preceding trip on the same line), together with actual headway (if available from APC or AVL), at each timepoint
14.9. percentage of timepoints departed within 1, 3, 5, 7, more than 7, and less than (-1) minutes of scheduled time, in histogram form
15. The system shall provide users with a concise “trip summary” report, typically less than or equal to 2 pages in length, summarizing across a user-selected range of dates for a given user-selected trip:
15.1. route identification, pattern identification, scheduled trip time, average scheduled running time, average actual running time, pattern direction (inbound, outbound) and range of schedule picks selected
15.2. schedule type and range of sample dates selected
15.3. operator IDs (if available),
15.4. average boardings, average alightings, stop description (on street, at street), average passengers on board, fare zone attribution and average number of standees for each stop, number and locations of wheelchair lift activations, and average scheduled time and average schedule deviation at each timepoint, in both graphical and tabular forms,
15.5. average passengers on board and average number of registered fares from each origin fare zone crossing each fare zone boundary (if available from fare collection system)
15.6. average scheduled recovery time and average actual recovery time utilization at start and end of trip,
15.7. average total boardings, average total alightings, average maximum load, most frequent maximum load point, average passenger trip length, average passenger standing time, average scheduled trip mileage and average actual trip mileage
15.8. average scheduled headway (time between this trip and the preceding trip on the same line), together with average actual headway (if available from APC or AVL), at each timepoint
15.9. percentage of timepoints departed within 1, 3, 5, 7, more than 7, and less than (-1) minutes of scheduled time, in histogram form
16. The system shall provide users with accurate summary information
16.1. The system shall automatically exclude from summary calculations and reports any trip samples of questionable data quality
16.2. The system shall provide users with accurate average hourly scheduled trips information (average number of trips scheduled to originate or terminate at the terminal in a given hour) for each hour of the day, for each service type (weekday, Saturday, Sunday, holiday), for each service pattern (route variation)
16.3. The system shall provide users with accurate average and median hourly max load and hourly max load variation (standard deviation) information for each hour of the day, for each service type (weekday, Saturday, Sunday, holiday), for each service pattern (route variation)
16.4. The system shall provide users with accurate average percent planned capacity utilization and hourly percent planned capacity utilization variation (standard deviation) information for each hour of the day, for each service type (weekday, Saturday, Sunday, holiday), for each service pattern (route variation)
16.5. The system shall provide users with accurate average percent actual capacity utilization and hourly percent actual capacity utilization variation (standard deviation) information for each hour of the day, for each service type (weekday, Saturday, Sunday, holiday), for each service pattern (route variation)
16.6. The system shall provide users with average and median hourly passenger-miles per trip (average passenger-miles per trip for sampled trips originating or terminating at the terminal in a given hour) and hourly passenger-miles variation (standard deviation) information for each hour of the day, for each service type (weekday, Saturday, Sunday, holiday), for each service pattern (route variation)
16.7. The system shall provide users with average and median hourly boardings per trip (average boardings per trip for sampled trips originating or terminating at the terminal in a given hour) and hourly boarding variation (standard deviation) information for each hour of the day, for each service type (weekday, Saturday, Sunday, holiday), for each service pattern (route variation)
16.8. The system shall provide users with average and median hourly running time and hourly running time variation (standard deviation) information for each hour of the day, for each timepoint interval, for each vehicle model, for each service type (weekday, Saturday, Sunday, holiday)
16.9. The system shall provide users with total monthly boardings and total monthly passenger-miles (product of average hourly value per trip and number of hourly scheduled trips, summed for all patterns on the route, hours of the day and days of the month), for each route, for each month
16.10. The system shall provide users with total annual passenger-miles (sum of monthly passenger-miles) and total annual unlinked trips (sum of monthly boardings) for each route, for each year, in a form and at an accuracy accepted by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) for National Transit Database (NTD) reporting
Verification strategy for summary measures: Collect APC data from a minimum of 2 trips on each pattern during each hour of the day on each service pattern; manually calculate each summary from detail data; verify that reported summary data matches manual calculation exactly.
17. The system shall provide users with accurate component status information
17.1. The system shall automatically notify users of onboard passenger count sensor failures within 18 hours of initial failure in greater than 99% of all cases
17.2. The system shall automatically notify users of onboard passenger count processor failures within 18 hours of initial failure in greater than 99% of all cases
17.3. The system shall automatically notify users of vehicle network failures within 18 hours of initial failure in greater than 99% of all cases
17.4. The system shall automatically notify users of vehicle processor (vehicle logic unit) or onboard data communications unit failures within 18 hours of initial failure in greater than 99% of all cases
17.5. The system shall automatically notify users of garage processor failures within 4 hours of initial failure in greater than 99% of all cases
17.6. The system shall automatically notify users of garage data communications unit failures within 12 hours of initial failure in greater than 99% of all cases
18. More…
Desired:
19. The system shall provide users with Environmental (coach temperature) Information (value $10k/yr, via reduction of A/C parts costs through improved maintenance management)
20. The system shall provide users with Vehicle Health Information
20.1. The system shall provide users with automatic notifications of vehicle electrical system problems
20.1.1. The system shall provide users with automatic notifications of vehicle electrical system component failures
20.1.1.1. The system shall provide users with automatic notifications of vehicle alternator failures (value $10k/yr through reduced road calls)
20.1.1.2. The system shall provide users with automatic notifications of vehicle battery failures (value $10k/yr through reduced road calls)
20.1.1.3. The system shall provide users with automatic notifications of corroded vehicle battery terminals (value $10k/yr through reduced road calls)
20.1.1.4. The system shall provide users with automatic notifications of intermittent vehicle grounds (value $10k/yr through reduced equipment failures)
20.1.1.5. The system shall provide users with automatic notifications of power conditioning failures (value $40k/yr through reduced equipment failures)
20.1.2. The system shall provide users with automatic notifications of vehicle electrical system trends indicative of impending component failures (value $20k/yr through reduced road calls)
21. The system shall provide users with passenger fare classification information for boardings at each stop
22. The system shall provide users with passenger destination fare zone information for boardings at each stop
23. The system shall provide users with passenger revenue information for boardings at each stop
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