Abstract
Measuring ease of access to transit services is important in evaluating existing services, predicting travel demands, allocating transportation investments, and making decisions on land development. A composite index to assessing accessibility of public transit is described. It involves use of readily-available methods and represents a more holistic measure of transit accessibility, integrating developer, planner, and operator perspectives. The paper reviews previous and current methods of measuring accessibility and selects three methods for application in a case study in Meriden, Connecticut. Inconsistencies are noted across the methods, and a consistent grading scale is presented to standardize scores. Finally, this paper proposes weighting factors for individual methods to formulate a composite measure based on individual accessibility component measures. The approach aims to provide a robust and uniformly applicable measure that can be interpreted easily by planners to identify shortcomings in service coverage and promote equity in transit accessibility in the community.
DOI
http://doi.org/10.5038/2375-0901.14.2.4
Recommended Citation
Al Mamun, Md. S & Lownes, Nicholas E.
2011.
A Composite Index of Public Transit Accessibility.
Journal of Public Transportation, 14 (2): 69-87.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.5038/2375-0901.14.2.4
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/jpt/vol14/iss2/4