ruteig

Ruteig is a term used in transport planning and network analysis to denote a composite index that rates the efficiency and reliability of a route within a network. It is typically employed to compare alternative routes for public transit, freight logistics, or digital routing systems, by aggregating multiple performance dimensions into a single score.

The word is a neologism that appears to combine the Norwegian word rute, meaning route, with a suffix that forms adjectives. In practical use, ruteig is not a fixed standard but a flexible metric that can be tailored to specific contexts through weighting and normalization.

In its common formulation, ruteig blends factors such as travel time, physical distance, service frequency or capacity, reliability (on-time performance or failure rate), and sometimes cost or energy consumption. Each factor is normalized to a common scale, and weights are assigned according to the priorities of the user or system. The resulting score allows quick comparison between routes: higher ruteig values indicate more favorable routing options under the chosen criteria.

Applications of ruteig appear in transit planning, logistics optimization, and network routing algorithms. Data requirements include historical travel times, distances, service reliability metrics, and, for cost-sensitive use cases, pricing information. Limitations involve sensitivity to chosen weights, data quality, and context-specific validity; different organizations may derive different ruteig scores for the same set of routes.

See also: route efficiency, multi-criteria decision analysis, network optimization.