A bus line performance index for the Athens transit system

The role of public transportation is particularly important in periods of economic recession, as transit systems are expected to offer low cost, equitable services, under decreased revenues and the need for expenditure cut-backs. In such an environment, re-structuring of transit system operations is essential for retaining an adequate level of service. Performance measurement and evaluation is inevitably the first step towards restructuring decisions; individual bus lines should be assessed and ranked before decisions on rerouting, merge or cancelation are made. The Athens (Greece) bus system is such a case of a transit system currently operating in an economic crisis environment. We propose a straightforward, practical model and associated index (Bus Line Total Performance Index – BLTPI) for evaluating individual bus lines of the Athens bus system. The model is derived through a multi-criteria decision analysis approach based on expert judgment. Results show that important bus lines obtain higher rankings and thus exhibit improved performance, while BLTPI values for low priority lines reveal the need for restructuring that part of the Athens network.