Extraboard team sizing: An analysis of short unscheduled absences among regular transit drivers

Diab, Ehab; Wasfi, Rania; El-Geneidy, Ahmed

doi:10.1016/j.tra.2014.04.019

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…It should be noted that to ensure robustness of the generated data, 20 stop times per stop location, time period, bus type, route number, and direction was used as a threshold for a group, which is comparable to previous studies (24,29). Accordingly, the groups that have 20 stop times or fewer were deleted from the data set.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Farside Story

Diab

El-Geneidy

2015

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation R

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Determining the proper location of bus stops is an important planning decision in the transit planning field. While previous efforts in the literature have suggested several advantages and disadvantages regarding certain bus stop placements, there has been little effort towards understanding the impacts of bus stop location on the transit system performance at the stop level of analysis. This article aims to evaluate the impact of bus stop location on bus stop time and stop time variation. It uses stop-level data collected from the Société de transport de Montréal (STM)'s automatic vehicle location (AVL) and automatic passenger count (APC) systems, in Montréal, Canada. The study findings show that stop times occurring on the near side of intersections are in average 4.2 to 5.0 seconds slower than stop times occurring on the far side of intersections, with no impact on stop time variation. A validation model is utilized to confirm the impacts of bus stop placements on stop time, using data from TriMet's automated bus dispatch system, in Portland, Oregon. This study offers transit planners and policy makers a better understanding of the effects of bus stop location on stop time and its variation in order to improve service quality while minimizing service variation at the stop level.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Farside Story

Diab

El-Geneidy

2015

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation R

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“…Other factors such as seasonality, month, day of the week, and timing of special events might also affect driver absences ( 51 ). Diab ( 52 ) proposed a method to predict the short-term absences among regular drivers. Long and Perry ( 53 ) conducted a survey in California and found that most transit agencies were using subjective methods based on personal experience to determine the extraboard driver size given driver absence.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-Stage Equitable Bus-Based Hurricane Evacuation Model With a Stochastic Driver Availability Component

Wang

Özbay

2022

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation R

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Transportation planning before the actual landfall of a hurricane can save lives by allowing evacuees to be transferred from the affected area to shelters in a safe and timely manner. This paper aims to fill an important research gap by proposing a detailed framework for bus-based evacuation planning with fair resource allocation in dense urban areas. We deconstruct the bus-based evacuation problem into multiple stages. Firstly, we identify a subset of existing bus stops to serve as bus pickup locations during the evacuation through the use of an integer programming model. The objective is to minimize the total number of pickup locations while ensuring full coverage of the demand. Secondly, the selected bus pickup locations are assigned to shelters where safe shelters are provided by the government. An equity component was introduced in the shelter assignment stage to ensure fair evacuation resource allocation. Finally, a bus driver management model was proposed that can be used to determine the optimal crew size in bus-based evacuation planning. A hypothetical hurricane evacuation scenario in New York City was used to evaluate the performance of the proposed methodology and the impact of model parameters. The results can provide feasible decisions on identifying bus pickup locations, shelter assignment, as well as the number of drivers needed for transit-based evacuation planning. The equity component shows a noticeable increase in equity index despite it only adding a small cost to the average travel distance.

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“…By contrast, the analysis of differences between units remained relatively superficial. The subsidiaries were compared, without making distinctions between their size, their environment (urban or suburban), or composition of the workforce, it is well known that, for example, age is a determinant of absenteeism (Diab et al 2014). Such comparisons, 'all else held unequal', reveal an inaccurate exploitation of such statistics: despite active strategies to prevent absenteeism, some visited subsidiaries that were structurally more prone to absenteeism due to the composition of their workforce were 'ranked badly' by management.…”

Section: Close Monitoring Of Absences and Accidents But Poor Benchmarkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Absenteeism still impacts the performance of transport companies. Extraboard teams -used to fill in for absent operators if no extra drivers are available -overtime paid to present drivers and missed trips are huge sources of costs, despite the improvement of planning practices (Diab et al 2014). In addition to their costs, these schemes cannot compensate for all the disruptions generated by absences; therefore, firms have a priori strong incentives to prevent absenteeism at work.…”

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confidence: 99%

When Preventing Absenteeism Fuels Long‐Sickness Leave: The Case of a Leading Operator for Local Transport Services

Askenazy

Cartron

2019

Brit J Industrial Rel

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We examine the strategy to reduce sickness absences of transit drivers in one of the leading Multinational Operators for Local Transport Services in France. Absenteeism dramatically rose as a result of this strategy. Using observations and interviews at the corporate and field levels, and company data, we disentangle the mechanisms that led to this failure. In a context of strong constraints especially from local communities, the strategy based on underlining the costs of absences pushed local units to change their management practices. They focused on chasing short absences, promoted presenteeism and intensified pressure on workers rather than boosting prevention. Eventually, long‐duration sickness leaves massively expanded.

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Extraboard team sizing: An analysis of short unscheduled absences among regular transit drivers

Cited by 6 publications

References 22 publications

The Farside Story

The Farside Story

Multi-Stage Equitable Bus-Based Hurricane Evacuation Model With a Stochastic Driver Availability Component

When Preventing Absenteeism Fuels Long‐Sickness Leave: The Case of a Leading Operator for Local Transport Services

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