Sponsor
This project was funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) under grant number (1024). The project also benefitted from matches from the Oregon Department of Transportation, TriMet, University of Utah, and Portland State University. Furthermore, we acknowledge and thank the anonymous peer reviewers who provided helpful insights and corrections to the report, which is published in the Journal of Transport Geography (Wei et al., 2017).
Document Type
Report
Publication Date
7-2018
Subjects
Transit oriented development -- Research, Transit oriented development -- Case studies, Local transit -- Planning, Transportation -- Planning
Abstract
Assessing the performance of public transit services has long been an important yet challenging issue for transportation agencies and researchers. Transit service performance measurement reflects a very first step towards an efficient and proactive management, where public transit agencies are increasingly pressured to provide high-quality services in spite of constrained resources. However, the performance evaluation of transit services is complicated by an array of quantitative measures available to assess the goals and the diversity in the goals themselves, which usually include improving operational efficiency and providing equitable access. While much previous work has examined public transit services for achieving optimal operational efficiency and/or access equity separately, the interplay of the two has rarely been investigated to date. This project developed a comprehensive framework and an open-source toolbox for evaluating and enhancing the overall performance of public transit systems by using a combination of mathematical programming methods, GIS-based analysis and multi-objective spatial optimization techniques. This framework enabled operational efficiency and access equity of transit systems to be assessed in an integrated manner. The python open-source toolbox operationalized the framework and make it accessible to transit planners, decision-makers and the public. The framework and the toolbox are applied to assessing the performance of fixed-route bus services operated by the Utah Transit Authorities (UTA) in the Wasatch Front, Utah, and transit services operated by TriMet in the Portland metropolitan area. Results demonstrate that the developed framework and toolbox can effectively account for operational efficiency and access equity in an integrated manner, providing a more comprehensive assessment for transit service performance.
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/26278
Recommended Citation
Wei, Ran, Aaron Golub, Liming Wang, and Thomas Cova. Integrated Performance Measures: Transit Equity & Efficiency. Project Brief NITC-RR-1024. Portland, OR: Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC), 2018.
Description
This is a summary of TREC research project NITC-RR-1024, which can be found online at: https://trec.pdx.edu/research/project/1024/
The final report can be found at:
https://doi.org/10.15760/trec.203