Geographic Information Systems Applications in Transit

This synthesis will be of interest to transit practitioners and researchers, including technical staff and transit managers, as well as to vendors of Geographic Information System (GIS) solutions. This report illustrates the value of GIS to transit agencies in service provision and in potential cost savings. The synthesis summarizes the experiences of a variety of transit agencies, with information provided from small- and medium-sized transit operators, as well as from large transit agencies. It documents current practices, effective applications, and challenges. This report includes a broad-based literature review supplemented by survey responses from more than 100 transit agencies. The report covers the full range of transit services including planning, operations, management, information technology, and customer service. Included are case studies from five large transit operators that demonstrate a number of innovative uses of GIS, as well as illustrate how GIS is becoming a part of mainstream information technology and a core technology in transit information services.