Who Can Access Transit? Reviewing Methods for Determining Population Access to Bus Transit (original) (raw)
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Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2011
Area type matters when we try to explain variations in public transit commuting; workplace (commuting destination) type matters more than residence (origin) type. We found this statistical link over a sample of all census tracts in the four largest California metropolitan areas: Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Sacramento. In this research, we used a statistical cluster analysis to identify twenty generic residence neighborhood types and fourteen workplace neighborhood types. e variables used in the analysis included broad indicators of location and density, street design, transit access, and highway access. Once identi ed, the denser neighborhoods had higher transit commuting, other things equal. Yet what distinguishes this research is that we did not use a simple density measure to differentiate neighborhoods. Rather, density was an important ingredient of our neighborhood-type de nition, which surpassed simple density in explanatory power.
Estimating Transit Accessibility with an Alternative Method Evidence from Broward County, Florida
Accessibility is one of the most widely used terms in urban and regional planning, urban economics, geography, and transportation planning. Scientists of planning, economics, and geography have treated accessibility in different ways. Despite its importance and overwhelming use in local, regional, and national analysis of spatial patterns, the meaning of accessibility remains unclear because of the absence of a clear-cut definition (1, 2). Hanson defines accessibility
Accessibility emerges as the transportation performance measure that emphasizes the benefits of the transportation system users, capturing more than the speed of travel. Transit accessibility shows how easy it is for an individual to travel to a desired destination using public transit. However, in order for transit to be considered as an option in mode choice at all, there has to be a feasible transit route leading from given origin to desirable destination within the available time frame. This paper uses spatial and temporal constraints, and a set of transit features that impact access to transit, to develop a conceptual framework for transit accessibility measurements in the potential Transit Oriented Development (TOD) location in West Valley City, Utah. As this network develops more transit friendly features, both temporal and spatial accessibility indicators will provide useful information on the opportunities the users can reach using transit. The proposed methodology builds upon the traffic and transit data from the case study network, and uses an open source tool to perform transit accessibility measurements by calculating the number of accessible transit stops from each origin. The methodology considers network features, acceptable walking time, available time budget, transit schedule variability and spatial constraints as impact factors in accessibility measurements. The goal of the paper is to establish a feasible set of transit accessibility indicators that would be used for both the case study street network and transit service modifications into a transit friendly and eventually a TOD environment.
2018
Accessibility measures the ease at which an individual can access a desired location. It is a major aspect in transportation planning, and transit systems are extensively used to improve accessibility. Well-designed public transit systems enable a high level of access to socioeconomic opportunities. This is especially important to socially disadvantaged populations due to their higher need for transit services to maintain a basic level of mobility. Increased transit-based accessibility can potentially diminish social exclusion rates and improve the well-being of these population groups. This research analyzes the spatio-temporal variability and the socio-demographic characteristics of transit-based job accessibility in Flagstaff, Arizona. This study employs a temporally-enabled schedule-aware simulation based on the transit system’s General Transit Feed Specification and the city’s street network. Gravity-based measurements were used in the calculation of accessibility from origin l...
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2018
This paper presents a new method for assessing transit and development co-location and applies it to a case study. Co-location is a core element of transit oriented development. It is currently assessed by designating activities within a given distance from transit as ''close to transit'' and calculating the activity density of these catchment areas or the share of activities within them. However, transit demand decreases with distance, so distribution of activities within transit catchment areas matters in addition to average density. The main contribution of the new method is explicitly assessing density distribution within transit catchment areas. It is based on the notion that density should not increase with distance from transit. Case study results demonstrate the method's ability to compare station areas based on aggregate indicator values, while also providing maps of disaggregate and spatially explicit co-location performance. This fine-grained analysis allows planners to identify potential future development areas. Results are compared to commonly used indicators for station area intensity and proximity of activities to transit. An important conclusion is that the new method should be used in combination with an intensity indicator. Transit oriented development (TOD) is an important planning paradigm (1-3). A key goal of TOD-engrained in its very name-is orienting development toward transit. This co-location of transit and development can be achieved by locating activities where they are close to transit, or by creating transit where activities are located. Co-location is important because the distance transit users are willing to travel (often by walking) to/from a transit stop is limited, and the share of people willing to walk to/from a stop decreases with distance (4-10). The exact form of this distance-decay of transit demand depends on factors including trip purpose, service characteristics, sociodemographic characteristics, and context. However, it is clear that the distance to/from a transit stop is one of the main factors determining the probability that potential transit users will actually use transit. Co-location is commonly considered in TOD planning, land use transport integration analysis, or direct demand models for transit because of its importance. The most common approach is to define a catchment area-the area within a certain threshold distance (Euclidean or network) from a transit stop-and to designate all activities within this area as ''close to transit'', and all other activities as ''not close to transit''. This approach is inadequate because of the influence of distance on potential transit users' travel behavior. This paper presents a new method for assessing transit and development co-location that accounts for the importance of proximity. It is organized into four parts. Part one describes current practices for co-location assessment and derives a research gap. Part two introduces a new indicator for co-location assessment. Part three applies the indicator in a case study. Part four presents the conclusions.
A new method for determining the population with walking access to transit
2010
The use of geographic information systems in determining transit service areas has not progressed far beyond simple buffering operations even though there is widespread capability to analyze network walking distances in conjunction with demographic, cadastral, and land-use data sets. This article presents a method for determining the population with walking access to bus stop locations using the spatial and aspatial attributes of parcels and the network distances from parcels to bus stop locations.
The unaffordable city: Housing and transit in North American cities
Cities, 2018
This paper presents an empirical analysis of seventeen large American and Canadian metropolitan regions to look at geographies of affordability in transportation and housing. A pre-recession snapshot of frequent transit networks are mapped against housing cost, urban form and socioeconomic variables from census data, and the relationship of housing cost to transit access is tested visually, by descriptive statistics, and with logistic regression. The results show apparent contradictions: while there is great variance in transit access and housing cost between and across cities, transitscapes are consistently more racially diverse, higher density, and poorer than surrounding autoscapes; but, once income and racialization are held constant, there is a decreasing chance of access to transit as housing prices become more affordable. In other words, for many people, there is no affordable access. These paradoxes are interpreted with relevance to patterns of racial and economic geographies of land use and mobility, the dominance of postwar automobility, the suburbanization of poverty, and wealth inequality in North American cities. This research fills gaps in the transit-oriented urban form research, by pointing to the need to consider housing affordability; it also fills gaps in the transit-oriented gentrification research, by opening consideration to all types of transit, not just rail. The results can be compared to relationships of housing affordability and transit in other cities across the world, as there are important commonalities and differences in geographies of poverty and access. While American and Canadian cities are becoming more like international cities in the peripheralization of affordable housing and the mismatch between transit and lower income areas, North American autoscapes face unique challenges to extending public transit access to these peripheries. Understanding and attending to these inequalities of access to housing and transportation can better inform efforts of sustainable transformation through significant mode shift and affordable urban form intensification.
Conducting Efficient Transit Surveys of Households Surrounding Transit-Oriented Developments
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2016
This paper presents best practices for transit survey protocols targeted at small geographic areas such as those in and around transit-oriented development and for households proximate to transit stations. The widespread dissemination of cell phones and rapidly decreasing presence of in-household landlines has made telephone interviewing prohibitively expensive; moreover, the portability of cell phone numbers has confounded small-area probability sampling. A postal mail push-to-web protocol described here is a more cost-efficient approach for small-area data collection, particularly when probability samples are sought. Address files are available from postal databases, and the strategy is to send respondents details on how to access an online questionnaire; continued nonresponse is then followed up, with the final mailed contact including a paper questionnaire. Embedded in the contacting protocol is a survey research experiment in which a method for maximizing response rates, the us...