Measuring Inter-Stop Distances to Improve Scheduling, Costing, and Enhance Sustainable Urban Mobility

This paper quantifies the economic and operational impact of spatial accuracy in metropolitan public transport systems, proposing a standardized GIS-based method for measuring inter-stop distances. Addressing the geometric limitations of legacy GTFS data, this study introduces a replicable workflow that integrates open spatial data with infrastructure-specific maneuvering constraints. The method was validated in the Górnośląsko-Zagłębiowska Metropolis (GZM), achieving near-identical precision to manual field measurements (MAPE ≈ 0.02%) while offering superior scalability compared to traditional odometer or satellite-based techniques. The analysis reveals that even minor measurement errors (approx. 2.5%) in legacy datasets propagate into significant budget misallocations, estimated at tens of thousands of PLN per line annually. These findings demonstrate that precise distance computation is a fundamental driver of cost efficiency and schedule reliability in large-scale transit networks.