Multimodal Connections with Transitways: Ridership, Access Mode, and Route Choice Implications

Abstract

Transitways—premium transit corridors employing technologies such as Light Rail Transit or Bus Rapid Transit—often depend on a variety of access and egress modes to connect users with their trip origins and destinations. This study seeks to create better understanding of how users access transitway stations by applying mode choice models, route choice models, and direct ridership models. Choice models were applied to revealed-preference transit passenger data from the Twin Cities show key components to user decisions regarding how to reach high-quality transit. To explore users’ choice of routes through the transit systems, schedule-based shortest path and multi-criterion shortest path algorithms were combined to investigate whether transit riders choose to take the shortest path between their origin and destination, a subjectively shortest path, or neither. In terms of ridership models, Poisson regression model were used to estimate average weekday boardings at transitway stations in 10 regions around the United States as a function of pedestrian, bicycle, and bus connections.