Departure time and route choice of commuters on mass transit systems

This paper describes an attempt to find the commuter response function to operational features of mass transit systems in deciding the departure time and route. Generalized departure time, the departure time scaled to the probability of being late for the appointed time for arrival, was proposed as the response function. The function was specified and tested by the observations carefully selected in order to achieve the required environmental control for the assumptions of modelling. The specified function was transferable among some cities in Japan. The route choice behavior could be deduced from the function.