The San Francisco Bay Area Water Transit Authority is evaluating expanded ferry service, as required by the California Legislature. As part of this process, Cambridge Systematics developed forecasts using a combination of market research strategies and the addition of nontraditional variables into the mode choice modeling process. The focus of this work was on expanding the mode choice model to recognize travelers' attitudes and different market segments. Structural equation modeling was used to simultaneously identify the attitudes of travel behaviors and the causal relationships between traveler's socioeconomic profile and traveler attitudes. Six attitudinal factors were extracted, and three of these were used to partition the ferry-riding market into eight segments. These market segments were used to estimate stated preference mode choice models for 14 alternative modes, which separated the travelers' reactions to time savings by market segment and which recognized that mode choices are different for market segments that are sensitive to travel stress or the desire to help the environment. The new mode choice models were applied within the framework of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's regional travel model and calibrated to match modal shares, modes of access to each ferry terminal, ridership by route and time period, and person trips by mode at screening line crossings. Additional validation tests of significant changes in ferry service in recent years were used to confirm the reasonableness of the stated preference model. The model has been applied for three future year alternatives and to test the sensitivities of pricing, service changes, and alternative transit modes.

The San Francisco Bay Area Water Transit Authority is evaluating expanded ferry service, as required by the California legislature. Predicting ferry ridership has historically been difficult because water-transit riders often choose their travel mode based on factors other than travel time and cost. Most forecast models place a premium on time and cost and ignore other traveler attitudes. Structural equation modeling was used to identify simultaneously travel behavior and the causal relationships between a traveler's socioeconomic profile and travel attitudes. These market segments were used to estimate stated-preference (SP) mode choice models for 14 alternative modes, which separated the traveler's reaction to time savings by market segment and recognized that modal choices were different for market segments that were sensitive to travel stress or a desire to help the environment. The focus was on the application of the model to evaluate three future-year alternatives and to test the sensitivity of pricing policies, service changes, and alternative transit modes. These sensitivity runs included increased tolls on bridges, parking charges for Bay Area Rapid Transit stations, reduced ferry headways, alternative transit investments (express buses) in ferry corridors, and combinations of these assumptions. The results from these model runs were used to support the environmental impact statement and implementation and operations plan and were used to prioritize routes for further consideration based on the ridership potential in the corridor. Preliminary work to competitively position a ferry system that maximizes ferry mode share based on the market segments in the corridor was undertaken for a few routes.