Gregory L. Thompson

The Relationship between Transit Ridership and Urban Decentralisation: Insights from Atlanta

Conventional wisdom suggests that the increasing decentralisation of population and employment in US metropolitan areas is to blame for declining public transit mode shares and deteriorating system productivity. Proponents of this view assert that transit performs best when it connects suburbs to central business districts in more centralised urban environments. Our time-series analysis of transit patronage in Atlanta suggests that the previously reported secular decline in transit patronage is attributable to employment decentralisation outside the MARTA service area but that this can be reduced if the transit system makes decentralising employment reachable.

Service Orientation, Bus—Rail Service Integration, and Transit Performance: Examination of 45 U.S. Metropolitan Areas

Service orientation is one of the most important decisions that a transit manager makes. A manager can concentrate service on the central business district (CBD) or disperse service to connect multiple destinations. Conventional wisdom suggests that transit managers should focus on serving the CBD, because that—such wisdom suggests—is where riders wish to travel. In some places, the service orientation decision is complicated by the need to define the specific role to be played by rail service. Some managers may view rail transit as part of an integrated network structure. Other managers may view it simply as the functional equivalent of a high-capacity bus route. This research examines the relationship between service orientation, bus–rail service integration, and transit performance in U.S. metropolitan areas with between 1 million and 5 million people. Metropolitan areas that have integrated their rail transit into a decentralized network structure are found to enjoy higher riding habit, higher service productivity, and better cost-effectiveness than metropolitan areas with other network structures or modal combinations. These findings suggest the need for transit managers to carefully consider the relationship between service orientation and bus–rail integration to better serve their customers and improve overall transit performance.

Explaining Variation in Transit Ridership in U.S. Metropolitan Areas Between 1990 and 2000: Multivariate Analysis

Between 1990 and 2000, transit patronage increased by around 7% in the United States, but there has been wide variation around this mean. Most research attributes variation in ridership change to a combination of socioeconomic and land use factors, which are beyond a transit agencys control, and service and fare policy decisions, which are within an agencys control. A study built on this earlier work by examining rider-ship change at the metropolitan scale for all metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the United States that had more than 500,000 people at the time of the 2000 census. The study incorporates several measures of service quality in order to evaluate the relative efficacy of policy decisions about service coverage, frequency, and orientation (central business district radial versus multidestination system orientation). The multivariate analysis shows that transit is growing most rapidly in the nontraditional markets of the West but that much of the regional variation is a function of the ...

What Really Matters for Increasing Transit Ridership: Understanding the Determinants of Transit Ridership Demand in Broward County, Florida

In 2004, Broward County Transit, located in Broward County, Florida, had among the highest ridership per capita and lowest cost per passenger kilometre of all-bus systems in US metropolitan areas with between 1 million and 5 million people. Broward County has few land use attributes thought necessary for transit success. This (2000) study seeks to understand its performance despite its transit-unfriendly urban environment by estimating a transit ridership demand model that differs from most by including generalised price of transit travel from origin to destination. The hypothesis, which the study confirms, is that price (time to reach employment) is more important than land use variables for explaining transit patronage, at least for a bus-only transit system with a large number of transit-dependent riders. The results of this study give further empirical support to recent transit system initiatives to focus more service on decentralised employment centres using multidestination transit network structures.

Making a Successful LRT-Based Regional Transit System: Lessons from Five New Start Cities

This paper examines five metropolitan areas where light rail transit (LRT) lines serve as regional transit backbones. The paper defines a successful LRT-based regional transit system as one with high riding habit and productivity for all combined modes in each metropolitan area, and as also having high LRT ridership and productivity. Based on these criteria, Portland emerges as a successful LRT-based regional transit system. Our analysis reveals three characteristics that explain the Portland transit system’s strong performance: the network’s dispersed nature, the overlay of a higher-speed, high-frequency regional LRT network atop the local bus system, and the use of transfers to provide passengers easy access to a diverse array of destinations. We examine the performance of all five metropolitan areas with respect to these characteristics using a combination of agency data and insights from interviews with key informants.

Estimating Transit Accessibility with an Alternative Method Evidence from Broward County, Florida

Scientists have attempted to measure accessibility in several ways—the gravity-based measure being the most widely used. A typical gravity-based model estimates accessibility on a zonal basis as being a function of the sum of total opportunities weighted by the distance, time, and cost needed to travel from the origin zone to those dispersed opportunities. The model includes a parameter that represents the distance–decay relationship and takes an exponential form. Unfortunately, most scientists have arbitrarily chosen the value of the distance–decay parameter instead of estimating it from field survey data. Also, a typical model does not have any parameter attached to the socioeconomic variables. This study uses distance–decay parameters estimated with the use of survey data in Sacramento County, California, to estimate transit accessibility to jobs in Broward County, Florida. Assuming that transferability of distance–decay parameters is possible from one geographic area to another, it then explores such transferability of parameters from Sacramento County to Broward County by analyzing the spatial distribution of transit accessibility and compares the effectiveness of estimated transit accessibility with the traditional transit accessibility measure—proportion of a geographic unit covered by 1/4-mi buffer from a transit route. Results indicate that accessibility indices estimated by using the method presented in this paper reflect what one would expect in reality—much better than what a simple 1/4-mi transit buffer would produce. The paper explores the fact that the distance–decay parameters estimated in one geographic unit are transferable to another. It advances knowledge of the accessibility measuring method that would help solve long-standing debate on what parameters to use for distance–decay and socioeconomic variables going into the accessibility model. Future research needs to focus on validating such transferability of distance–decay parameters from one study area to another.

Understanding Transit Ridership Demand for the Multidestination, Multimodal Transit Network in Atlanta, Georgia: Lessons for Increasing Rail Transit Choice Ridership while Maintaining Transit Dependent Bus Ridership

This study analyses the structure of transit demand in Atlanta’s transit system to understand why different elements of the network appeal to bus and rail riders. By estimating direct demand models of work trip use between pairs of traffic analysis zones, the authors find that self-identified bus riders come from poorer areas having fewer autos per household and seek to reach jobs scattered throughout the metropolitan area. Their demand is highly elastic with respect to travel time. They care not about the presence of transit-oriented development (TOD) attributes at either origins or destinations. Self-identified rail riders primarily access transit by automobile and value fast service to within convenient walking distance of employment, such as in the central business district (CBD) and some but not all TODs. The results suggest that an agency could increase ridership by both groups using a core network of higher speed lines that provide access to decentralised employment centres.

New Insights into the Value of Transit: Modeling Inferences from Dade County

Whether transit accessibility influences labor force participation and income of different racial and ethnic groups is examined. The methodology involves the use of two-stage least-squares analysis to control for possible reverse causality in two of the explanatory variables: transit accessibility and auto ownership. Earlier literature on spatial mismatch theory suggests that transit accessibility should make a difference in unemployment rates for African Americans confined to inner city ghettos. In contrast, more recent literature suggests that other variables, such as workplace discrimination, are far more significant explanatory variables. Because all of these studies used measures of transit accessibility that failed to show the ease with which residents of a geographic area could access jobs in the entire region, this study attempts to do so. The transit accessibility measure is first calculated for traffic analysis zones (TAZs) in Dade County, Florida, and it is then used as one of several explanatory variables in models of African American, Hispanic white, and non-Hispanic white labor force participation; median zonal household income; and automobile ownership in TAZs. This research finds that transit accessibility does not explain labor force participation of any of the groups, but it helps explain household income as well as auto ownership. Higher transit accessibility is concluded to either directly or indirectly increase wage rates significantly for autodisadvantaged groups.

Where Transit Use Is Growing: Surprising Results

This article investigates whether transit’s fate is tied to the last vestiges of old urban forms or whether transit is finding niches in the new, largely suburban urban forms that increasingly have manifested themselves since the 1920s. The hypothesis is that most growth is in census regions with the strongest vestiges of older urban forms centered on CBDs. The hypothesis was tested by documenting how transit performance changed between 1990 and 2000 in U.S. metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 people in the year 2000. Results show that, for MSAs with fewer than 5 million people, transit use has been growing faster than very rapid population growth in the West region, but not elsewhere in the country. The conclusion is that transit growth is not tied to old urban forms. A future article will explore causality of transit use growth and service productivity change.

Misused Product Costing in the American Railroad Industry: Southern Pacific Passenger Service between the Wars

Reflecting recent studies that have highlighted the importance of product cost accounting, this article traces the resistance of American railroad managers to the tool, despite growing pressure from academic and engineering economists. This study reveals widespread misunderstanding among managers about the nature of railroad costs, particularly misconceptions about the proportion of fixed and variable costs and the definition of direct costs. It illustrates the impact of these misapprehensions through a detailed examination of Southern Pacifics interwar passenger strategy.