Travel time, delay and reliability of ferry transportation across a waterway

Abstract

This paper studies the journey time, delay, system reliability, vessel and passenger arrival patterns and their interdependence in six waterway transport (ferry) routes across a river. Deviations from average and buffer time indices (indicating reliability) are calculated for waiting delay, ferry journey and total travel time of passengers. Although the ferry journey is fairly reliable (6-19% deviations), large unreliability persists in waiting time (56-95% deviation). Intuitively, it decreases in locations with higher frequencies and passenger flow. Further, consistency in maintaining fixed frequency results in passengers remembering the schedule and arriving just in time, as observed statistically. A 50% hypothetical increase of frequency with fixed departures decreases the waiting delay by 29-59% and increases the reliability by 30-96%. The outcome of this paper can invigorate transportation operations over short waterway routes, as the result provides implications from the passengers’ and operators’ perspectives.