01475237

Component

On July 11th, 2011, StarMetro, the transit agency in Tallahassee, Florida, restructured its entire bus network from a downtown-focused radial system to a decentralized, grid-like system. Transit managers restructured the network to a decentralized grid with several crosstown routes and multiple transfer points scattered throughout the community. They believed this new network design would better align service to the pattern of local development, which is increasingly decentralized and suburban. They believed that doing so would increase transit’s attractiveness to potential riders, which would result in increased ridership and improved service productivity. We use a combination of system-level, route-level, and stop-level data to describe the transit system before and after this major service change and to thus determine whether the network restructuring achieved these objectives. We find that system-level ridership has not increased in proportion to the increase in service deployed as part of the service change, although new ridership has appeared in previously un-served suburban markets. Service productivity has thus declined on a system-level basis, although it is strong in some transit corridors. New riders have emerged in some of the newly served areas, but many of these new areas are served by routes with lower-than-average service productivity. Our analysis suggests that infrequent service (especially longer than originally-planned headways) has affected restructuring’s ability to achieve its stated ridership and productivity objectives. The experience in Tallahassee provides lessons for other small-sized metropolitan areas that are considering the use of major service changes to increase ridership and maintain or enhance productivity.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP010 Transit Management and Performance

01470560

13-1170

English

19p

2013

Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Maps; References (19) ; Tables

Bus rapid transit; Metropolitan areas; Productivity; Public transit; Ridership; Routes and routing; Suburbs; Transportation corridors

Road networks

Tallahassee (Florida)

Operations and Traffic Management; Public Transportation; I70: Traffic and Transport

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2013 Paper #13-1170

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Feb 5 2013 12:20PM