T-BESTNothing But the BEST for

Transit Planning and Ridership Forecasting

TBAG, October 28, 2004

Research Project Team Ram M. Pendyala

Dept of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Univ of South Florida, Tampa

Steve Polzin and Xuehao ChuCenter for Urban Trans Research (CUTR), Univ of South Florida, Tampa

Software Development: Rodney BunnerGeodecisions, Inc., Tampa

Wade White* and Seongsoon Yun*

Gannett Fleming, Inc.

Fadi NassarKeith & Schnars PA, Fort Lauderdale

Project Manager: Ike UbakaPublic Transit Office, Florida Dept of Transportation, Tallahassee

History of Transit Model Development FDOT Public Transit Office very proactive in

transit planning tool development TLOS and FTIS examples of transit planning

and information tools Transit ridership modeling tools

ITSUP: Integrated Transit Demand & Supply Model RTFAST: Regional Transit Feasibility Analysis &

Simulation Tool Towards stop-level ridership forecasting

models

T-BEST Arc 1.1 Model estimates number of boardings at a

stop by: Route Direction Time period

Model estimates two types of boardings: Direct Boardings: Walk and Bike Access Transfer Boardings: Transit Access

ESRI ArcGIS based transit network mapping and coding capability

T-BEST Arc: A Sophisticated Planning ToolT-BEST Arc accounts for:

Population and employment at stopAccessible population and employment from

stopRoute attributes

Fare Route type Frequency Technology Span of service Special generators Transfers Time of day Wait time, transfer time In-vehicle time

Role of Accessibility and Connectivity Transit ridership strongly affected by:

Destination accessibility Temporal availability Network connectivity Competing and complementary stops

T-BEST sensitive to all four aspects of transit accessibility

Ability to test effects of alternative route and network design configurations on transit boardings

Sophisticated methodology in T-BEST

Model and Software Functionality

T-BEST provides user-friendly interfaces and functionality: GIS interface for database setup and displays Sets of default equations by time period Automated buffering Automated accessibility and impedance

computations Report generation including performance measures

T-BEST Arc Software T-BEST 1.1 software development complete Model estimation using APC data from

Jacksonville Statewide Census 2000 data included Full GIS functionality for drawing/coding transit

routes Complete users guide available Training @ USF Engineering Computer

Lab on Wednesday, December 8, 2004 – Stay Tuned!