Mind the Map!The Impact of Transit Maps on Path Choice in Public Transit

摘要

This paper investigates the impact of schematic transit maps on passengers’ travel decisions.It does two things: First, it proposes an analysis framework that defines four types ofinformation conferred from a transit map: distortion, restoration, codification, and cognition,and their potential impact on three types of travel decisions: location, mode, and pathchoices1. Second, it conducts an empirical analysis to explore the impact of the famousLondon tube map on passengers’ path choice in the London Underground (LUL). Using datacollected by LUL from 1998 to 2005, the paper develops a path choice model and comparesthe influence between the distorted tube map (map distance) and reality (travel time) onpassengers’ path choice behavior. Results suggest that passengers often trust the tube mapmore than their own travel experience on deciding the “best” travel path. This is true evenfor the most experienced passengers to the system. The codification of transfer connectionson the tube map, either as a simple dot or as an extended link, could affect passengers’transfer decisions. The implications to transit operation and planning, such as tripassignments, overcrowding mitigation, and the deployment of Advanced Transit InformationSystem (ATIS), are also discussed.