01697652

Component

With an 11% nationwide decline in bus ridership between 2012 and 2017, understanding the intricate dynamics of ridership change is critical. This paper evaluates the local dynamic of bus ridership in Portland, OR, and Minneapolis St Paul, MN. For the first time, bus ridership is modeled at the route level over five years using data from Automatic Passenger Counters aboard the buses. The authors begin by analyzing the relationship between ridership and frequency of service. Isolating the effects of frequency, and using data on population and demographics, the authors identified the factors correlated to ridership in the base case. These factors and their change over time were then used to model ridership change. For both transit agencies, the proportion of workers under 30 years old was closely linked to ridership in 2011 and to the increase in ridership in subsequent years. In Trimet, the number of boardings per trips was rather uniform over routes and over time as frequency of service explained 0.89 of the variation in ridership. In Metro, routes with access to low-paying job locations was highly correlated to ridership in 2011 but routes with the highest proportion of low-paying jobs within 1/4 mile lost the most ridership between 2011 and 2015. Overall access to jobs, however, had a strong positive effect on ridership. This analysis provides a description of bus ridership trends and their associated factors in two widely different transit agencies. The method and some of the results can be generalized to better understand this national phenomenon.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP050 Standing Committee on Bus Transit Systems. Alternate title: Understanding Ridership Change at the Route Level:A Comparison of Portland and Minneapolis St-Paul

19-02112

English

5p

2019

Transportation Research Board 98th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

References

Access; Bus transit; Jobs; Mathematical models; Passenger counting; Ridership

Automated passenger counters

Miami (Florida); Minneapolis (Minnesota); Portland (Oregon)

Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2019 Paper #19-02112

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 7 2018 9:33AM