Generating route-level mutually exclusive service areas: comparative study of alternative methods

Willing-to-walk distance was investigated as a means of measuring spatial accessibility of bus stops and of examining the effectiveness of alternative methods of generating mutually exclusive transit service areas at the route level. First, the walking distance to and from a transit stop was investigated with onboard survey data. Two methods in geographical information systems - the combination of Thiessen polygon and buffer and the network distance-based service area - were compared as strategies for generating mutually exclusive service areas. For the examination of the effectiveness of these two methods, all mutually exclusive service areas were validated with a spider diagram generated from an onboard survey. Measures of urban form were also statistically tested for comparison of the two methods. A case study of a single route, serving the Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota, metropolitan area, was performed with data from various sources, such as Google's General Transit Feed Specification, an onboard survey, parcel-level land uses, and the U. S. Census street network. Validation with onboard survey data demonstrates the strengths of each method. Results also show that the network-based service area, a popular geographical information system method for service area analysis, does not yield a more meaningful strategy for generating mutually exclusive transit catchment areas, especially when spacing between stops is very small

Intraurban rail access: Policy implications of five revealed perspectives from a Q-sorting exercise in three Australian cities

This project advances current understanding of intra-urban rail passengers and their travel experiences in order to help rail industry leaders tailor policy approaches to fit specific, relevant segments of their target population. Using a Q sorting technique and cluster analysis, our preliminary research identified five perspectives occurring in a small sample of rail passengers, who varied in their frequency and location of rail travel as well as certain socio-demographic characteristics. Revealed perspectives (named to capture the gist of their content) included: ‘Rail Travel is About the Destination, Not the Journey’; ‘Despite Challenges, Public Transport is Still the Best Option’; ‘Rail Travel is Fine’; ‘Rail Travel? So Far, So Good’; and ‘Bad Taste for Rail Travel’. This paper discusses each of the perspectives in detail, and considers them in terms of tailored policy implications. An overarching finding from this study is that improving railway travel ‘access’ requires attention to physical, psychological, financial, and social facets of accessibility. For example, designing waiting areas to be more socially functional and comfortable has the potential to increase ridership by addressing social forms of access, decreasing perceived wait times, and making time at the station feel like time well spent. Even at this preliminary stage, the Q sorting technique promises to provide a valuable, holistic albeit fine-grained analysis of passenger attitudes and experiences that will assist industry efforts to increase ridership

A GIS-Based Method to Assess the Pedestrian Accessibility to the Railway Stations

Modern cities, affected by congestion, atmospheric and acoustic pollution, land consumption, should change and return to being on a human scale, rather than designed for cars. Proper land-use planning, infrastructure improvement and implementation of targeted interventions have to ensure that there is a rapprochement of citizens about the public transport, in order to reduce these problems. An important aspect of modal choice by users of the public transport system is, however, linked to the quality of the pedestrian routes. In fact, every journey made by public transport begins and finishes on foot. Therefore, studying pedestrian accessibility to transit stations and the walkability of the pedestrian environment is really important, in order to understand how they influence the user\u2019s choices. So, in this paper, a GIS-based method, useful for the assessment of the quality of pedestrian paths and accessibility to stations, is proposed. The measurement of the quality of road segments is useful for the redesign of the spaces, the planning of interventions on the pedestrian routes and the setting of the intervention priorities, developing a decision support system. Different indicators, linked to the pleasantness of the route, to practicability and to safety, which have a different influence on the user\u2019s choice, have been chosen for the quality of the pedestrian routes. As a case study, some stations of the railway link of Palermo (Belgio, Francia and San Lorenzo) have been chosen, in order to identify solutions to be proposed to the municipal administration