A claimed benefit of real-time information (RTI) apps in public transit systems is the reduction of waiting time by allowing passengers to appropriately time their arrivals at transit stops. Although previous research investigated the overall impact of RTI on waiting time, few studies examine the mechanisms underlying these claims, and variations in its effectiveness over time and space. In this paper, we theorize and validate the sources of RTI-based users’ waiting time penalties: reclaimed delay (bus drivers compensating for being behind schedule) and discontinuity delay (an artifact of the update frequency of RTI). We compare two RTI-based strategies – the greedy strategy used by popular trip planning apps and a prudent strategy with an insurance buffer – with non-RTI benchmarks of arbitrary arrival and following the schedule. Using real-time bus location data from a medium-sized US city, we calculate the empirical waiting times and risk of missing a bus for each trip planning strategy. We find that the best RTI strategy, a prudent tactic with an optimized insurance time buffer, performs roughly the same as the simple, follow-the-schedule tactic that does not use RTI. However, relative performance varies over time and space. Moreover, the greedy tactic in common transit apps is the worst strategy, even worse than showing up at a bus stop arbitrarily. These results suggest limitations on claims that RTI reduces public transit waiting times.

公共交通系统中实时信息（RTI）应用程序的一项宣称优势是，通过允许乘客适当地安排他们到达公交车站的时间，可以减少等待时间。尽管先前的研究调查了RTI对等待时间的总体影响，但很少有研究研究这些主张背后的机制以及其有效性随时间和空间的变化。在本文中，我们对基于RTI的用户的等待时间惩罚的来源进行了理论化和验证：回收延迟（公交车司机补偿落后于进度）和不连续性延迟（RTI更新频率的伪像）。我们将两种基于RTI的策略（流行旅行计划应用程序使用的贪婪策略和带有保险缓冲区的审慎策略）​​与任意到达并遵循计划的非RTI基准进行了比较。使用来自美国中型城市的实时公交车位置数据，我们为每种出行计划策略计算了经验等待时间和丢失公交车的风险。我们发现最好的RTI策略是一种谨慎的策略，具有优化的保险时间缓冲区，其执行效果与不使用RTI的简单，遵循计划的策略大致相同。但是，相对性能会随时间和空间而变化。此外，普通公交应用程序中的贪婪策略是最差的策略，甚至比任意出现在公交车站更糟糕。