Development of Florida’s Transit Level-of-Service Indicator

Abstract

Transit availability—the opportunity to use transit service at a particular location—is a key determinant in transit use. If transit service is unavailable near a potential passenger’s origin and destination, it is not a viable travel option. The Florida Department of Transportation’s transit level-of-service (TLOS) indicator is a measure of transit availability that incorporates service coverage, frequency, and duration; the availability and quality of pedestrian routes to transit stops; and population and job density. The TLOS indicator’s basic concept is that at any given minute, a transit vehicle serves a small group of people; that is, those people who could board a vehicle when leaving their job site or residence that minute, walk no more than a specified distance to a transit stop, and wait no more than a specified time for a vehicle to arrive. Geographical information system–based software developed for the TLOS project can be applied to every transit vehicle for each minute in a day. The data can be compiled for time frames ranging from 15 minutes to 1 week to assess the amount of service for each part of a transit system’s service area. The TLOS indicator was tested in Tallahassee, Florida, and produced results compatible with, but more detailed than, the availability measures contained in the Transit Cooperative Research Program’s Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual. Potential applications include service evaluation, transportation modeling, and improvement of modal-split calculations.

Connecting People to Places: Spatiotemporal Analysis of Transit Supply Using Travel-Time Cubes

“…Most studies of social equity and public transit accessibility entail an aggregate comparison between transit need and transit supply. In these studies, transit need is often established over space as a measure of socioeconomic status in neighborhood units while transit supply is typically measured at the neighborhood level as the ease of reaching transit facilities (Murray et al, 1998;O'Neill, Ramsey and Chou, 1992;Moniruzzaman and Páez, 2012), reaching transit facilities weighted by level of service (Rood and Sprowls, 1998;Henk and Hubbard, 1996;Ryus et al, 2000;Hunter-Zaworski, 2003;Drew and Rowe, 2010;Al Mamun and Lownes, 2011;Currie, 2010), or reaching actual destinations with transit (O'Sullivan, Morrison and Shearer, 2000;Lei and Church, 2010;Foth, Manaugh and ElGeneidy, 2013;Páez and Farber, 2012;Farber, Morang and Widener, 2014). One drawback of these studies is that transit need is poorly characterized by zonal population characteristics since different population groups demand travel to different types of destinations at different times of the day.…”

“…Public transit accessibility has been extensively studied from the perspectives of station access (Murray et al, 1998;O'Neill, Ramsey and Chou, 1992;Moniruzzaman and Páez, 2012), average service frequency (Rood and Sprowls, 1998;Henk and Hubbard, 1996;Ryus et al, 2000;Hunter-Zaworski, 2003;Drew and Rowe, 2010;Al Mamun and Lownes, 2011) and origindestination travel times (O'Sullivan, Morrison and Shearer, 2000;Lei and Church, 2010). These can all be considered static measures of access, since the score for a particular location does not vary temporally.…”

“…These can all be considered static measures of access, since the score for a particular location does not vary temporally. Aside from a few exceptions (Lei, Chen and Goulias, 2012;Polzin, Pendyala and Navari, 2002;Ryus et al, 2000), very few dynamic measures of accessibility have been put forward by the research community.…”

Performance evaluation of bus routes

“…Ewing (1995) refere que um quadro analítico de análise se deve basear nos conceitos de mobilidade (a facilidade com que os indivíduos se movem, o que depende da velocidade, da densidade de trânsito do percurso, da disponibilidade de parqueamento, entre outros fatores), da acessibilidade, do grau em que o tráfego é calmo e da sustentabilidade (que inclui aspectos como poluição e o consumo de combustíveis). Ryus et al (2000), por outro lado, dão ênfase a assuntos como a cobertura da rede (relativamente à densidade populacional em termos de residência e de trabalho), à frequência do serviço, à duração da viagem por percurso, à qualidade dos veículos e das paragens. Cood e Walton (1996) analisam vários critérios de avaliação do desempenho que incluem a mobilidade, a conectividade, a acessibilidade, a eficiência em termos de custos, a eficiência energética, a qualidade do ar, o impacto nos recursos naturais, o ruído, a segurança, o impacto nas populações residentes, os efeitos no emprego e outros impactos económicos.…”

A Composite Index of Public Transit Accessibility

“…The transit level-of-service (TLOS) indicator developed by Ryus et al (2000) provides an accessibility measure that uniquely considers the existence and eminence of pedestrian route connected to stops. It also combines population and job density with different spatial and temporal features to measure transit accessibility.…”