Mind the map! The impact of transit maps on path choice in public transit
Research highlights
► Schematic transit maps offer important but geographically inaccurate information. ► Such map information could affect passengers’ location, mode, or path choices. ► A path choice model is developed for 18,894 passengers in the London Underground. ► Passengers trust the map (map distance) more than their own experience (travel time). ► Codification of transfer stations on a map affects passengers’ transfer decisions.
Introduction
Traveling in a transit system often involves a greater degree of uncertainty than traveling on a road network due to the complexity of transit systems and the stochastic nature of services (Hickman and Wilson, 1995). Transit users often need more information in planning travel than road travelers, such as operating hours, fare and fare media, waiting and travel times, access and egress, transfers, station locations, and seat availability (Abdel-Aty et al., 1996, Cluett et al., 2003). Such information is critical to passengers’ travel decisions (Khattak et al., 2003, Chorus et al., 2007), and the provision of information could be a powerful planning tool to guide individual decisions and to enhance the overall efficiency of the system (Polak and Jones, 1993, Ben-Elia and Shiftan, 2010).
While most studies in this field have focused on Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS), this paper considers an alternative perspective and targets traditional information media. In particular, it focuses on the effect of schematic transit maps on travel decisions in public transit. The central argument is that a transit map has a tremendous impact on a passenger’s perceptions and his or her usage of the transit system. If implemented appropriately, a transit map can be a valuable tool to solve planning and operation problems in a cost-effective way.
This paper first develops a conceptual framework of the impact of the map on transit travel and then focuses on a specific travel decision: path choice in public transit. The case study of the London Underground indicates that passengers often (mis)trust a transit map more than their actual experience; they often take a path that looks shorter on the system map but is longer in reality compared with alternative paths. They also try to avoid transfer stations when the coded connection on a map looks less convenient than it actually is. The implications of the map on transit planning and operations are also discussed.
Section snippets
Literature
The importance of maps to spatial behavior has been well documented (Woods, 1992, Hutchins, 1995, MacEachren, 2004). However, in the field of transportation, maps have attracted little attention. Little is known about the travel information delivered by a map to a traveler and the effect of a map on travel decisions. There have been few efforts to incorporate the map as an analytical tool for transportation planning (Jankowski et al., 2001). The author identifies only a few related studies.
Transit map and travel information
A transit map is a schematic diagram that depicts the locations, directions, and connections of stations and lines in a public transit system. It normally does not include service information, such as travel time or crowding.2 A transit map can deliver four types of travel
London Underground and the tube map
London has the world’s oldest underground railway system with services operating since 1863. The system had only one line at the beginning, so the map was simple and fully geographic. When the system grew bigger and became more complex, geographical details began to impair the legibility of the map, and many stations in outer London were cut off from the map (Garland, 1994). Many experiments were performed in the early 1900s, which mainly focused on Central London and gradually teased out the
Modeling the map effect on path choices
To test the transit map effect on passengers’ path choices, a reference is defined as the reality. If a transit map presents a distorted reality, then the key research question is what passengers trust more: the schematic map or their own experience.
In this paper, the map effect is operationalized into two ways: map distance and transfer connection. The former is the distance of a path measured from a transit map. A passenger is often able to infer this distance by reading the transit map and
Results and analysis
Most variables in both models were significant at the 5% level with expected signs. In the Base Model, the more a path had in terms of entry, exit, in-vehicle, initial waiting time, transfer walking or waiting time, the less likely that path was chosen by a passenger. In-vehicle time was perceived as more onerous than the initial waiting time (−0.55 vs. −0.36) probably due to the high frequency of service. Transfer walking was more onerous than entry and exit walking (−0.32 vs. −0.29) while
Discussion and conclusion
This paper investigates the effect of schematic transit maps on travel decisions in public transit systems. The relationship might have significant implications for public transit operation and planning, but so far it has been largely overlooked by both academics and practitioners. The paper first defines four types of information delivered from a transit map: distortion, restoration, codification, and cognition, and then discusses their potential influence on travel location, mode, and path
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Professor Nigel H.M. Wilson from MIT for his insight that made this study possible. He is also grateful for the valuable comments from Anthony Shorris, Rae Zimmerman, John Attanucci, Andrew Mondschein, and Amy Faust. The path choice model described in this paper was developed by the author with funding support from Transport for London (TfL) through the MIT-TfL Research Initiative.
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Path refers to a unique sequence of entry, transfer, and exit stations/stops in the public transit network. The author differentiates between path and route choices because the latter could refer to a situation among different service routes that follow the same physical path, which is not the purpose of this analysis.