Mode choice, Density, Residential self-selection, Home-based work tour, New York Metropolitan Region,

Traffic congestion in Northern New Jersey imposes a substantial time operational penalty on bus service. The purpose of a project was to quantify the additional travel time that buses need because of traffic congestion. A regression model was developed to estimate the travel time rate (in minutes per mile) of a bus as a function of car traffic time rate, number of passengers boarding per mile, and the number of bus stops per mile. The model was used to estimate the bus travel time rate if cars were traveling under free-flow conditions, and the results were compared with the observed bus travel times.

Over the last decade, a large number of high capital cost transportation projects have been proposed for the New York City Region. Many have resulted from addressing evolving capacity needs, changes in regional demographics and economics, meeting the improvements necessitated by operating century old subway systems and recognizing the impact of moving freight in a dense region. But the catalyst for bringing all of these projects to the attention of the public and all regional agencies was the tragedy of September 11, 2001. While these projects entail massive investments ($50-$60 billion), little analytical work has been carried out to measure the transportation and economic costs and benefits they entail and to categorize them accordingly. Competition among agencies to secure adequate resources to implement any of the desired projects makes such analysis necessary; yet there still remain political, vested economic interests and agency rivalry barriers to achieving this important planning objective. This paper reports the methodological approach taken by these authors for consistent and transparent project evaluation and then presents results from the ranking and prioritizing methodology. The policy underpinnings and implications of the analysis are discussed in a subsequent paper and thus only briefly touched upon here in the concluding section.