TBEST Nothing But the BEST for Transit Planning

T-BEST Nothing But the BEST for Transit Planning and Ridership Forecasting TBAG, October 28, 2004

Research Project Team Ø Ram M. Pendyala Dept of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Univ of South Florida, Tampa Ø Steve Polzin and Xuehao Chu Center for Urban Trans Research (CUTR), Univ of South Florida, Tampa Ø Software Development: Rodney Bunner Geodecisions, Inc. , Tampa Ø Wade White* and Seongsoon Yun* Gannett Fleming, Inc. Ø Fadi Nassar Keith & Schnars PA, Fort Lauderdale Ø Project Manager: Ike Ubaka Public Transit Office, Florida Dept of Transportation, Tallahassee

History of Transit Model Development Ø FDOT Public Transit Office very proactive in transit planning tool development Ø TLOS and FTIS examples of transit planning and information tools Ø Transit ridership modeling tools v ITSUP: Integrated Transit Demand & Supply Model v RTFAST: Regional Transit Feasibility Analysis & Simulation Tool Ø Towards stop-level ridership forecasting models

T-BEST Arc 1. 1 Ø Model estimates number of boardings at a stop by: v Route v Direction v Time period Ø Model estimates two types of boardings: v Direct Boardings: Walk and Bike Access v Transfer Boardings: Transit Access Ø ESRI Arc. GIS based transit network mapping and coding capability

T-BEST Arc: A Sophisticated Planning Tool Ø T-BEST Arc accounts for: v Population and employment at stop v Accessible population and employment from stop v Route attributes Fare Route type Frequency Technology Span of service Special generators Transfers Time of day Wait time, transfer time In-vehicle time

Role of Accessibility and Connectivity Ø Transit ridership strongly affected by: v Destination accessibility v Temporal availability v Network connectivity v Competing and complementary stops Ø T-BEST sensitive to all four aspects of transit accessibility Ø Ability to test effects of alternative route and network design configurations on transit boardings Ø Sophisticated methodology in T-BEST

Model and Software Functionality Ø T-BEST provides user-friendly interfaces and functionality: v GIS interface for database setup and displays v Sets of default equations by time period v Automated buffering v Automated accessibility and impedance computations v Report generation including performance measures

T-BEST Arc Software Ø T-BEST 1. 1 software development complete Ø Model estimation using APC data from Jacksonville Ø Statewide Census 2000 data included Ø Full GIS functionality for drawing/coding transit routes Ø Complete users guide available Ø Training @ USF Engineering Computer Lab on Wednesday, December 8, 2004 – Stay Tuned!