Redesigning subway map to mitigate bottleneck congestion: An experiment in Washington DC using Mechanical Turk

Zhan Guo, Jinhua Zhao, Chris Whong, Prachee Mishra and Lance Wyman

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2017, vol. 106, issue C, 158-169

Abstract: This paper explores the possibility of using subway maps as a planning tool to influence passenger route choice to mitigate congestion. Specifically, it tests whether extending the appearance of an overcrowded subway line on the Washington DC subway map would encourage passengers to use other underutilized lines. The experiment was conducted through the Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing platform, with 3056 participants, producing 21,240 route choice decisions on the official and six alternative maps. Results show that redesigned maps significantly affect participants’ route choices. Depending on the specific design, a 20% length increase of the overcrowded line could move 1.9–5.7 percentage points of ridership to an alternative, underutilized line. The change could remove up to 10 passengers per car during the highest peak, reducing the number of highly congested half-hour periods (max load=100–120 passengers per car) on the overcrowded line from 4 to 1, and the number of crush periods (max load>120 passengers per car) from 3 to 1. This is done at minimal or zero cost. The paper calls for more attention from transit agencies to the planning potential of transit maps.

Keywords: Subway map; Route choice; Congestion; Washington DC; Mechanical Turk (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856416304177
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transa:v:106:y:2017:i:c:p:158-169

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2017.09.017

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice is currently edited by John (J.M.) Rose

More articles in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().