Monitoring speeds and identifying problem areas is essential for any public transport system, because of the direct impact on its operating costs and on users’ travel time. This study generates a tool that identifies, quantifies and displays congestion bottlenecks of the bus operation in the city.

The model is applied to Santiago de Chile’s public transport system, which faces a steady decline in operating speeds. It was possible to identify locations with the most serious problems, allowing transit authorities to focus their efforts on the areas that need it the most. In addition, it was found that problems are oncentrated in certain sectors of the city, including the central business district and intersections where the radial axis roads encounter the city’s central ring road. Finally, it is worth mentioning that once the problems are identified, it is essential to conduct site visits and combine this research outputs with other sources of information in order to find the cause of the problem and propose solutions.