The Cost of Transit Delays

As a frequent user of public transit, I know how impactful delays are both on my productivity and my mental health. Being stuck in Secaucus Junction because of some nonsense happening in NYC is a feeling all too familiar for me.

Researchers from Stevens Institute of Technology have quantified the impact of disinformation in the media by using AI to model disruption scenarios from the social media alerts for the PATH train. They used clustering techniques like K-means and BERTopic to classify different disruption scenarios, then used Monte Carlo simulation to generate potential train flows given these scenarios, calculating lost time and rerouting costs.

They discovered that even mild disruptions could lead to stations being closed as much as 11% of the time, if timed at certain periods like major sporting events. I've seen how the waiting area fills up with disgruntled Knicks fans after a Hawks game, and it's a ticking time bomb for a targeted attack.

In our modern, social media-driven world, the potential for information propagation causing mayhem is more significant than ever before. It is incumbent on us all to remain calm when such disruptions happen, knowing that the cause may not be mere negligence, but active maliciousness by an attacker.

Read more here: https://lnkd.in/epaDBfH5

The underlying study: https://lnkd.in/ehDt9RNv