This Metropolitan Council Transitway Accessibility readme.txt file was generated on 20191121 by Kristin Carlson

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GENERAL INFORMATION
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Title of Dataset: METROPOLITAN COUNCIL TRANSITWAY BLOCK LEVEL ACCESSIBILITY

Author Information (Name, Institution, Address, Email)

	Principal Investigator: Andrew Owen aowen@umn.edu
	Associate or Co-investigator: Kristin Carlson carl4498@umn.edu
	Accessibility Observatory, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota
	Address: 2221 University Avenue S.E. Minneapolis, MN 55414

Date of data collection: 20190301–20191231 

Geographic location of data collection: <Metropolitan Council Jurisdiction and 75 miles beyond. Twin Cities, Minnesota> 

Information about funding sources or sponsorship that supported the collection of the data: Metropolitan Council, National Accessibility Evaluation, Pooled-Fund project participant


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DATA & FILE OVERVIEW
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Zipped Shapefile

Naming format: <SCENARIO BASE>_<SCENARIO ALTERNATIVE>_<DAYOFWEEK><TIME>.zip

BASE_FUNDED_WKDY79.zip
BASE_FUNDED_WKDY111.zip
BASE_FUNDED_WKDY46.zip
BASE_FUNDED_WKND111.zip

FUNDED_BDE_WKDY79.zip
FUNDED_BDE_WKDY111.zip
FUNDED_BDE_WKDY46.zip
FUNDED_BDE_WKND111.zip

BE_BDE_WKDY79.zip
BE_BDE_WKDY111.zip
BE_BDE_WKDY46.zip
BE_BDE_WKND111.zip

DE_BDE_WKDY79.zip
DE_BDE_WKDY111.zip
DE_BDE_WKDY46.zip
DE_BDE_WKND111.zip

BD_BDE_WKDY79.zip
BD_BDE_WKDY111.zip
BD_BDE_WKDY46.zip
BD_BDE_WKND111.zip

NOTE: 7–9AM, 4–6PM, 11AM–1PM


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METHODOLOGICAL INFORMATION
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Block level accessibility is calculated at four day/time combinations for transit travel. Each shapefile layer contains fields that describe cumulative job accessibility for the baseline and alternative scenarios. 

Baseline: Existing transit service as of spring 2019
Funded Scenario: C Line, Orange Line, Green Line Extension
Bus Rapid Transit Scnearios: D Line, B Line, E Line 

Example: BE_BDE_wkdy_79* compares transit networks with B Line and E Line and compares with the complete network (B, D, E Lines) the difference is the accessibility impact provided by D Line. Similar for DE_BDE and BD_BDE.

The transit travel time data is calculated using the Accessibility Observatory's version of OpenTripPlanner an open source transit routing software. The transit network is from General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data for the Metropolitan Twin Cities and the pedestrian network is from OpenStreetMap. The jobs and worker data comes from the Census Bureau's annually updated Longitudinal Employer-Household Database (LEHD). Accessibility by transit is calculated for each Census block by routing transit vehicles from origins to destinations and counting up the total number of jobs reachable from a block in a given travel time threshold, e.g. 30 minutes. 

NOTE: Please see CTS research report "Accessibility Evaluation of Transitways in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Region" report for more methodological information.

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DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION 
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Number of fields: 93

Number of cases/rows: 512,873

Variable list, defining any abbreviations, units of measure, codes or symbols used:

GEOID10: Block identifier
UR10 - 2010 Census urban/rural indicator  (U = Urban, R = Rural)
UACE10 - 2010 Census urban area code
UATYPE - 2010 Census urban area type
FUNCSTAT10 - 2010 Census functional status
INTPTLAT10 - 2010 Census latitude of the internal point
INTPTLON10 - 2010 Census longitude of the internal point

wacC000: Total number of jobs in block X
racC000: Total number of workers living in block X

bs_300: Baseline cumulative job accessibility in 5 min transit travel time from block X
alt_300: Alternative scenario cumulative job accessibility in 5 min transit travel time from block X
abschg_300: The absolute change in job accessibility in 5 min transit travel time from block X (alt_300 - bs_300)
pctchg_300: The percent change in job accessibility in 5 min transit travel time from block X (alt_300 - bs_300)/bs_300
.
.
.
bs_5400:
alt_5400:
abschg5400:
pctchg5400:

wt_bs: The baseline travel time weighted job accessibility from block X (see report for weighting decay function)
wt_alt: The alternative scenario travel time weighted job accessibility from block X (see report for weighting decay function)
abschgtmwt: The absolute change in time weighted job accessibility from block X (alt_wt - bs_wt)
pctchgtmwt: The percent change in time weighted job accessibility from block X (alt_wt - bs_wt)/bs_wt