Analyst Tool

1. Corridor Frequency
2. Route Speed
3. Stop Frequency
4. Boardings/Alightings
5. O/D Aggregation
6. Winners and Losers
7. Historical Route Speed

Flow Lines and Link Volumes also appear in the analysis list, but are not currently available and are shown in grey. If you would like to find out more, contact us at support@podaris.com.

The Analyst Tool allows you to generate outputs based on your networks, services and simulations and create at-a-glance visualisations based on a variety of analysis types.

Clicking the Analyst Tool button on the tool bar will bring up a variety of analysis options and buttons on the tool properties panel for running analyses, exporting analysis data and clearing the current analysis.

Once you have selected your analysis type and selected the appropriate settings, the Analyse button will begin analysis. The export button will export the outputs in a variety of formats, including GeoJSON, Shapefile and KML.

Once an analysis is running, changing any of its settings re-runs it straight away — there is no need to click Analyse again. The Clear button removes the analysis and its legend from the map.

Which analyses need a simulation?

The analysis types fall into two groups, and it is worth knowing which is which before you start:

• Network and timetable analyses — Corridor Frequency, Route Speed and Stop Frequency. These work directly from the services you have planned, so you can run them at any time.
• Simulation analyses — Boardings/Alightings, O/D Aggregation and Winners and Losers. These describe how people use your network, so they need the results of a demand simulation.

For the second group, a Primary Simulation selector appears beneath the analysis type. Choose the simulation run you want to analyse from this list. Winners and Losers additionally asks for a Baseline Simulation to compare against.

Caution: If you run one of the simulation analyses without choosing a Primary Simulation, the map will simply come back empty rather than showing an error. If you see no results, check the Primary Simulation selector first.

Corridor Frequency

Corridor frequency analysis can produce at-a-glance segment-by-segment overviews of either:

• The number of vehicles per hour (Peak VPH) operating on a segment
• The Number of Services (unique routes) operating on a segment
• The Average VPH operating on a segment (the project clock sets the time range in order calculate the average here).

The Value dropdown list allows you to select which of these you would like displayed. The legend displayed in the bottom-right corner of your map indicates the VPH or number of services value associated with each segment's colour.

The day used for analysis can be set according the dropdown Day list.

The colour-coding of your routes can be set to represent either the busiest direction or for combined directions.

Clicking will allow you to export a GeoJSON, Shapefile or KML file which contains a services field - this corresponds to the Podaris IDs for the services on that segment.

The value field of the exported file contains the total number of routes that use that segment.

Segment Vehicle Per Hour

Clicking an individual segment will bring up the Segment Vehicle Per Hour graph, where you can view more detailed statistics for each segment. Hovering over a bar will produce exact values for the given hour on the day chosen in your preferences.

The download button allows you to export these hour-by-hour statistics as a .csv file.

Clicking the graph and selecting 'save image as...' will allow you to download a raster image of the graph itself. It can be scaled before downloading by clicking and dragging the corner of the Corridor Frequency window to resize it.

Route Speed

The Route Speed analysis type allows you to view the average route speed between each stop based on the distance and duration between stops.

This can be achieved with the Analyst Tool in the following way:

1. Select Route Speed as the analyst type.
2. Select the route, pattern and direction you wish to analyse.
3. Select Average or Difference mode. Difference mode allows you to compare the route speed between different timings by changing mode to difference and selecting the timing(s) that you wish to compare to. This allows you to compare RTI/AVL speeds to timetabled speeds or compare the speeds at different times of the day. 
4. Select timing(s).
5. Click Analyse.

The stopwatch button on the patterns tab of the services panel also allows you to perform this action on specific patterns,

Stop Frequency

Stop Frequency analysis will produce statistics for all stops (stations) within your project. These statistics take into account the day/date selections made in your project clock.

There are three types of display for this analysis:

• Total departures - the number of vehicles stopping at each station.
• Average VPH - the average number of vehicles stopping at the station per hour.
• Peak vehicles - the maximum number of vehicles stopping at the station.

Clicking a station while in this mode is an alternative way of bring up the Station Service Overview panel on which departures per hour can be viewed according to route or agency on a given day, and exported using the .csv button. Hovering over the bar for a given hour will produce more detailed statistics.

Clicking items from the legend above the chart will enable/disable them.

Boardings/Alightings

Boardings/Alightings shows how many simulated passengers get on and off at each stop. Every visible station is drawn as a circle, sized and coloured by its volume, so the busiest interchanges stand out immediately. This analysis needs a simulation run selected as the Primary Simulation.

Two settings control what you see:

• Display — switch between Boardings and Alightings.
• Route — narrow the results to a single route, so each circle shows only that route's contribution at the stop. Leave it blank to see activity across all routes.

Clicking a station opens a panel with its total boardings, alightings and combined figure, plus an hour-by-hour chart showing when that activity happens. The download button on that panel exports the stop's figures as a .csv file.

The Export button offers a choice of two formats: Geometry gives you stop points in GeoJSON, Shapefile or KML, while Spreadsheet gives you a .csv containing the Podaris ID, stop ID, stop name, parent station and the boarding, alighting and total figures for every stop.

O/D Aggregation

O/D Aggregation groups the trips from a simulation into a grid of hexagons and colours each one by a value you choose. It is the quickest way to see patterns across a whole study area — for example, which neighbourhoods face the longest journeys, or where the most trips begin. It needs a simulation run selected as the Primary Simulation.

• Resolution — how fine the hexagon grid is. The default of 7 gives hexagons of roughly 5 km²; increasing the number produces smaller hexagons and more detail.
• Display — whether each trip is counted at its Origin or its Destination.
• Property — the value being mapped: Generalised Cost, Duration (minutes), Distance (in your project's units), Transfers, or No. of Trips.
• Penalty Category — only shown for Generalised Cost. Leave it blank for the whole round-trip cost, or enter a category to see the contribution of just that part of the cost.
• Aggregation — how the trips in each hexagon are combined: SUM, AVG, MIN or MAX.

The legend shows the value range across the grid. Exporting gives you the hexagons as polygons in GeoJSON, Shapefile or KML, each carrying its calculated value.

Tip: Start at the default resolution to get an overview, then increase it once you know which part of the study area you want to look at more closely. Finer grids take longer to calculate.

Winners and Losers

Winners and Losers compares two simulations and maps the difference between them, so you can see who gains and who loses from a proposed change. It uses the same hexagon grid, Property and Aggregation settings as O/D Aggregation, but asks for two simulation runs: your proposal as the Primary Simulation, and the situation you are comparing it against as the Baseline Simulation.

Each hexagon shows the primary value minus the baseline value. Increases are shaded in blue and decreases in red, grouped into up to five bands on each side, with a separate legend for each direction.

Caution: The map shows a raw difference, so blue does not automatically mean "better". For Generalised Cost, Duration and Transfers, an increase is a worse outcome for passengers — check which property you have selected before interpreting the colours.

As with O/D Aggregation, the Export button gives you the hexagons as polygons carrying their difference values.

Historical Route Speed

Historical Route Speed colours a route by the speeds vehicles have actually achieved along it, drawn from historical vehicle-location data rather than your modelled or timetabled speeds. It is useful for pinpointing where services lose time in practice, and for building the evidence case for bus priority measures.

Note: This analysis type relies on a connection to your historical vehicle-location data and is not enabled on every account. If it appears greyed out in the analysis list, contact us at support@podaris.com.

Once you have chosen a Route and Direction, the remaining settings define which historical journeys are included and how they are summarised:

• Start Date and End Date — the period to draw observations from.
• Start Time and End Time — the time window within each day, so you can isolate a peak period.
• Days — which days of the week to include.
• Segment — whether speeds are summarised between stops, or in 25 m sections for a more detailed picture along a corridor.
• Metric — Minimum, Maximum, Average, or Percentile. Choosing Percentile reveals a further list so you can select which percentile to display.

The dates, times and days default to the settings in your project clock, so setting the clock first saves you filling them in here.

Tip: Percentiles are often more revealing than averages when making the case for bus priority. A low percentile shows how bad the worst journeys get, which is what passengers experience as unreliability.