Please join us in congratulating METRANS USC Price Transportation PhD student, Sandip Chakrabarti, on the successful defense of his dissertation, “The demand for reliable travel: Evidence from Los Angeles, and implications for transit policy.”  Chakrabarti wrote a multi-essay dissertation on travel reliability and its influence on transit demand. His work makes a major contribution to our understanding of travel behavior.  In addition to a critical review of the literature on value of travel time and travel reliability, he wrote three empirical essays using highly detailed transit and transportation system data available from the ADMS (Archived Data Management System) research project, enhanced by his own additional data collection efforts.  The first essay examines transit use across bus lines, and tests whether the level of transit use is related to the level of service reliability.  The second essay conducts a similar study, but at the level of bus stops.  In both cases, reliability is positively associated with transit use.  The third essay explores the question of whether people who have a choice of whether to drive or use transit are influenced by transit reliability.  In this case he uses individual travel survey data, simulates route and mode alternatives, and estimates a discrete choice model of the usual means of travel to work. Again he finds a positive relationship for transit service reliability.

Chakrabarti’s work is innovative, methodologically strong, and contributes to practice.  This is the first study of its kind that measures directly the effect of service reliability on transit use.  It suggests that operational strategies that make transit more reliable could contribute to increased transit use and better transit productivity.

Chakrabarti’s advisor, USC Professor Genevieve Giuliano and dissertation committee members – USC professors Marlon Boarnet, Genevieve Giuliano, James Moore, and Lisa Schweitzer – have served with pleasure.

Sandip Chakrabarti came to USC from India. He received a master’s degree in city planning from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 2008 and a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Jadavpur University, Kolkata in 2006. He worked as a planning consultant in New Delhi between 2008 and 2010. Chakrabarti resides in Los Angeles with his wife Chandrani.  They are expecting their first child this summer.  Chakrabarti can be reached at [email protected].