Direct Ridership Forecasting
Precise, quick-response alternative for forecasting transit patronage
The feasibility – and fundability -- of a new transit service hinges on ridership projections. Rail ridership is traditionally forecast with region-wide travel demand models, which often represent a region’s transportation network and land use at an aggregate scale. These models often are unresponsive to changes in station-level land use and transit service characteristics. As transit trips often represent a relatively small percentage of the travel considered in regional models, model imprecision can produce erratic swings in location-specific ridership estimates and unreliable transit forecasts. Large, complex models also require substantial and continuing investments of time and money to develop, maintain and operate.
Direct Ridership Models represent a precise, quick-response alternative for forecasting transit patronage. They are directly and quantitatively responsive to land use and transit service characteristic within the immediate areas of prospective transit stations, and to comparative regional accessibility offered by transit and auto. Direct Ridership Models use multivariate regression based on empirical local data to determine the station characteristics that most influence rail transit patronage for light rail, commuter rail, and heavy rail. They respond directly to factors such as parking, rail service levels and characteristics, feeder bus levels, as well as data on station-area households and employment to estimate ridership.
Transportation User Benefits - SUMMIT
SUMMIT quantifies travel benefits of transit investments
FTA's software program SUMMIT quantifies the benefits of potential transit investments. One common use of SUMMIT is to compare the benefits experienced by all travelers from a major transit investment as compared to a low-cost service improvement option. Thematic mapping of results can be used to evaluate how the transit investment might disproportionately benefit different segments of the community, such as neighborhoods with a high proportion of low-income or senior residents. Thematic mapping also pictorially reveals the "winners and losers," those whose travel choices expand if the major investment is constructed (green shades), versus those who would have better choices with the low-cost baseline option (red shades).
Simulation of Transit Corridor Operation
MAX, Bus Rapid Transit, Las Vegas
Fehr & Peers assisted the RTC of Southern Nevada with research of bus rapid transit (BRT) signal priority alternatives and provided corridor-specific recommendations for transit signal priority to be deployed on N. Las Vegas Boulevard for the Metropolitan Area Express (MAX), which is a BRT system using the CIVIS vehicle manufactured in France. To perform the traffic and transit operational analysis, Fehr & Peers used two primary traffic analysis and modeling tools, Synchro 5.0 (for optimizing traffic signal timing and coordination throughout the corridor) and VISSIM (for displaying a dynamic simulation of traffic, transit and pedestrian movement for the entire roadway network).
Fehr & Peers’ modeling effort included developing a VISSIM model to accurately portray existing (baseline) conditions, calibrating and validating the existing model to within 5 percent of existing travel times, and developing VISSIM models to analyze the future project alternatives with and without transit signal priority. Based on the VISSIM simulations, major issues such as MAX vehicles passing CAT buses were identified and addressed. Without the use of simulation, these issues may not have been caught until the vehicles were deployed in the field, which would have severely hindered the implementation schedule.
Analogue Station Analysis Techniques
Assesses the suitability of potential corridors and station sites for different modes of transit, and predicts ridership at potential stations via comparison to existing stations
Station area population and employment, and station transit service levels have proven to be powerful predictors of station ridership, and indicators of areas suitable to different forms of transit. Fehr & Peers has developed databases on nearly 100 station sites in northern California and Utah. These databases include station ridership data as well as station area data on population and employment, transit service levels and other characteristics. For a proposed rail or BRT station site, analogue stations are identified on the basis of station area population and employment and transit service levels and other factors such as park-and-ride facilities. Stations with land use and transit access characteristics comparable to the proposed station site are examined quantitatively and qualitatively. One or more “lower ridership” and “higher ridership” analogue stations are then identified to bracket the ridership potential at the proposed station.
Simulation of Intermodal Centers
An efficient tool to analyze traffic conditions at Intermodal centers (including Transit Oriented Developments) is traffic micro-simulation software. By modeling the behavior of individual vehicles on the roadway system, these analysis tools can accurately represent traffic conditions at Intermodal centers. For example, a micro-simulation model can analyze operations of a rail transit station including buses, passenger pick-ups/drop-offs, and automobile parking. An example output from the micro-simulation model for the San Francisco Transbay Terminal is provided. These tools present results using 2-D and 3-D graphics which are ideal for public meetings and presentations to stakeholders and decision makers.
