MEASURING PUBLIC TRANSIT ACCESSIBILITY

Often the public and policy makers are told that transit service is available to 70% to 90% of the urban population--that is, a bus stop is located within a quarter mile of the residential location. Yet transit planners and consumers know that transit service is not really that accessible. A good understanding of public transit accessibility has a number of potential benefits for planners and policy makers. Accessibility is an important indicator of transportation system performance. Accessibility measures can be used for evaluating service configurations and service levels as well as major investment options. Accessibility measures enable assessments of equity in the allocation of service investments. Accessibility measures also have the potential to help communicate transit's relative competitive position. A richer knowledge of accessibility can be useful in understanding transit service and subsequently improving the delivery of transit to the traveling public. This research effort, carried out under contract with the Public Transit Office of the Florida Department of Transportation, explored a full range of possible measures of accessibility and developed a software package designed to let planners evaluate the transit accessibility of a region or zones within a region using a choice of measures. This paper discusses the development of better measures of transit accessibility for urban areas and presents some of the results of analyses conducted with the accessibility measurement capability developed as part of this package.