Adding new runtimes into your timetables has historically been difficult and inaccurate….until now.
If you’re a transit planner, you’ve been there: you’re working on your latest network redesign or route update and you realize that the new route to the library uses roads on which your agency has never operated buses. How do you estimate runtimes on these new roads?
Historically, planners have been left with a few (bad) options. You either painstakingly enter the start and end points of every segment into a consumer-facing journey planner (which reflects car speeds, rather than bus speeds), or you can ask an operator to take a bus out of service and spend an afternoon driving the planned route.
And even if a bus has run on these roads before, the historical runtimes data from that service likely lives in a separate system, and you’ll have to manually pull the data into your new timetable. Another headache and another opportunity for manual errors.
All of these options take time — and time is money, especially when you’re paying an operator to take an empty bus out for a spin. But the inaccuracy inherent to both methods can also cost you money. Assuming the wrong road speed for a bus can result in massive cost overruns when your route actually goes into service, and more buses are needed to keep up with the schedule you’ve set.
Remix’s Runtime Engine helps you build accurate timetables in seconds, even on roads where buses have never run before.
Today, we’re thrilled to announce: there’s a better way. Remix’s Runtime Engine is a suite of new features that help you build more accurate timetables, faster than ever. Today we’re highlighting two features in particular: Corridor Runtimes and Predictive Runtimes. Together, they use historical data from your city to automatically populate accurate runtimes into your timetables, on roads where you’ve run buses before — and those where you haven’t. You’ll save up to hundreds of hours of work, and rest easy knowing your timetables are accurate.
Corridor Runtimes: populate runtimes data for routes using roads your system has used before.
If you’re drawing a new route on a corridor where your agency has run a bus before, Remix automatically pulls in the most recently-published runtime data from that segment and populates it for the new route. This means you don’t have to spend time tracking down historical speed information and manually inputting it into your timetables.
Corridor Runtimes uses recent data to automatically populate runtimes in your timetable when you’re planning new routes on streets where you have run buses before.
Predictive Runtimes: Predict runtimes on roads where buses have never run before.
Remix Predictive Runtimes uses a first-in-industry data model, trained on historical data from your city (e.g., bus speeds, traffic conditions, road classes, and more) to accurately predict runtimes on segments where no bus has gone before. It also automatically populates these runtimes into your timetable, potentially saving you hundreds of hours of work.
The outcome? You can draw a route in Remix, on a road where your agency has never run a bus before, and instantly have an accurate runtime for that route populated directly in your timetable.
Predictive Runtimes instantly builds an accurate timetable on roads where you’ve never run buses before.
Why it's critical to get runtimes right.
Inaccurate runtime estimates lead to scheduling conflicts for operators, unreliable service for riders, flawed costing predictions, and incorrect understanding of how far riders can travel on your network in a reasonable amount of time.
Check out the example below. The “Before” image represents a route’s estimated cost and accessibility when we used a flat speed (like what you might get from a journey-planning app or by asking your operator to drive the route) to estimate how long the bus would take to complete trips. By “flat” we mean that this speed doesn’t account for variability throughout the day or week.
The “After” image uses the output from Remix Predictive Runtimes. It accurately takes bus speed and runtime variability into account. As you can see, this route would actually be much 3x more expensive to run — and people can’t travel nearly as far within 60 minutes. With Predictive Runtimes, you can be confident that your predicted costs and accessibility metrics are accurate, even if a bus has never traveled that road before.
Estimating runtimes using "flat" speed estimates across the entire week (not accounting for speed variability by hour of the day, or day of week) yields inaccurate runtimes - which means inaccurate bus scheduled, cost estimates, and accessibility analysis. Remix Runtime Engine changes that.
Predictive Runtimes and Corridor Runtimes combine to help you build timetables faster and more precisely than ever before.
What this means for you:
- Accurate cost and resourcing estimates on new routes
- True understanding of your system’s accessibility
- Reliable timetables that your riders can trust
- Hundreds of hours saved = more time to focus on…well, anything else
Want to learn more about Remix's new Runtime Engine? Let us know below, and we'll reach out.
