The Transit Travel Time Machine: Comparing Three Different Tools for Travel Time Estimation

Recent working paper:

• Lahoorpoor, Bahman and Levinson, D.  (2020) The Transit Travel Time Machine: Comparing Three Different Tools for Travel Time Estimation. To be presented at the Transportation Research Board Conference, Washington, DC, January 2020.

Estimating the OD travel time matrix is an essential step in transport demand forecasting, accessibility analysis, spatial interaction modeling, and reliability analysis. Many tools have been developed to estimate the travel time between origins and destinations by different transport modes. This paper systematically reviews three tools: ArcGIS Network Analyst, OpenTripPlanner, and Google Maps Application Programming Interface, that are able to estimate an OD travel time matrix, and compares the results for 30 stations of Sydney Trains network with a same set of parameters. Bus, train (rail), and transit modes are tested. Results indicate that OpenTripPlanner produces higher transit travel times than Google Maps API (2.8 minutes) while ArcGIS Network Analyst estimates a travel time 6 minutes higher on average than Google Maps API for transit modes.