Introduction Conceptual Outline Methodology Data Collection Spatial Analysis Results Design Problems
Conceptual Outline
Transit planning is by no means as exact science. It does rely heavily on the types of analysis performed in this exercise, but also requires intricate and qualitative knowledge of the community in which the planning takes place. This exercise employs only several socio-economic variables provided by Census Canada and the concept was created through the background knowledge of the author, so it far from being comprehensive, methodically complete.
There are numerous factors that affect and control transit ridership. In a broader sense, they can be organized into external and internal. External factors are those that the transit agency does not have direct control over, such as gas prices, income, and employment and residential densities. Internal factors, on the other hand, can be directly controlled. These include fares, and quality and quantity of transit services provided.
The analysis in this project utilizes external socio-economic variables to create a transit demand scale for residential neighborhoods at a census dissemination level, while bus routes and their frequencies are used to assess the spatial coverage that provides transit service levels. The 5 socio-economic variables accessed from Canadian Census Analyzer are:
·Dissemination Population Density
· Average Income
· Automobile Usage for Travel to Employment Location as Driver
· Percentage of Population Employed
· Percentage of Population Aged 0-19, 60 and Over
There has be significant credible research correlating transit ridership with these variables, with the strongest correlation between population density and ridership demand. In this exercise, all the variable are given equivalent weight, something that does not necessarily reflect reality.
Although an abundance of research exists relating the previous variables to demand, there is a lack of literature that provides a direct relationship between the frequency of a bus route and spatial coverage and service is provides to a residential neighbourhood. Most of the literature that does exist is for metropolitan areas, rarely applicable to mid-sized city. Spatial coverage is the ridership catchment area - the distance a person is willing to walk to catch a bus on an individual route. The transit industry, inappropriately in the view of the author, assigns a 400 M catchment buffer area on either side a bus route. In this exercise, the catchment area will be variable, calculated using the frequencies of peak-time travel of the bus route. By examining the schedules in Nanaimo, the bus roués are categorized into 3 different peak time frequencies: Less than 20 minutes, 20-40 minutes, and over 40 minutes.
Once the demand and service layers have been created, the objective is to create a demand/service ratio. The focus of the ratio will be to find neighbourhoods with a high demand/service ratio, indicating an inadequate level of service. The analysis will be performed only on residential areas only. Commercial nodes comprise of large transit demand, but the transit demand for these nodes is more effectively calculated using transportation and traffic engineering techniques.