A public transit planning strategy and application based on making spontaneous trips

What is it about?

Public transit planners have typically used measurements built around anticipating the number of riders. This paper presents a strategy for evaluating a transit network based on how well it allows riders in a geographic area, such as a city, to make spontaneous trips. To do this, an open source software tool was developed to measure what points of an area can be reached, at every minute of the day and from every point on a high-resolution grid, using real transit schedules and accurate walking routes. The paper applies this technique to evaluate transit network restructures in Seattle. It also suggests some techniques from information theory to speed up these measurements.

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Why is it important?

Public transit agencies in the United States are seeing decreases in riders. Some posit that this is because of ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft. These services offer one principle convenience in an area that public transit struggles: the ability to make unplanned, unanticipated trips. With this measurement, transit agencies can keep spontaneity in mind when planning changes to their networks, in hopes of reversing the trend of decreasing ridership.