01024676

Component

https://onlinepubs.trb.or...pubs/trispdfs/01024684.pdf

The San Francisco Bay Area Water Transit Authority is evaluating expanded ferry service, as required by the California Legislature. Predicting ferry ridership has historically been difficult because water-transit riders often choose their travel mode based on factors other than the travel time and cost. Most forecast models place a premium on time and cost, ignoring other traveler attitudes. As part of this study, Cambridge Systematics developed forecasts using a combination of market research strategies and the addition of non-traditional variables into the mode choice modeling process. The authors expanded the mode choice model to recognize individual travelers’ sensitivity to stress, travel time and environmental factors by segmenting the market. They used structural equation modeling to simultaneously identify the attitudes of travel behaviors and the causal relationships between traveler’s socioeconomic profile and traveler attitudes. The authors extracted six attitudinal factors, three of which were used to partition the ferry riding market into eight segments. These market segments were used to estimate stated-preference mode choice models for 14 alternative modes, which separated the traveler’s reaction to time savings by market segment and recognized that modal choices are different for market segments that are sensitive to travel stress or desire to help the environment. The new mode choice models were applied within the framework of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s regional travel model and calibrated to match modal shares, modes of access to each ferry terminal, ridership by purpose, route and time period, and person trips by mode at screenline crossings. Additional validation tests of significant changes in ferry service in recent years were used to confirm the reasonableness of the SP model. The focus of this paper is on the application of the model to evaluate three future year alternatives and to test the sensitivity of pricing policies, service changes and alternative transit modes. These sensitivity runs included increased tolls on bridges, parking charges for BART stations, reduced ferry headways, alternative transit investments (express buses) in ferry corridors and combinations of these assumptions. The results from these model runs were used to support the environmental impact statement (EIS) and implementation and operations plan (IOP), and were used to prioritize routes for further consideration based on the ridership potential in the corridor. Preliminary work to competitively position a ferry system that maximizes ferry mode share based on the market segments in the corridor was undertaken for a few routes.

01024684

English

11p

2004-3

Ninth TRB Conference on the Application of Transportation Planning Methods

CD-ROM

Figures (4) ; Tables (1)

Access; Alternatives analysis; Attitudes; Environmental impacts; Express buses; Ferries; Ferry service; Ferry terminals; Forecasting; Future; Headways; Investments; Market research; Market segmented groups; Modal split; Mode choice; Parking; Periods of the day; Persons by socioeconomic levels; Policy; Pricing; Ridership; Routes; Sensitivity analysis; Stated preferences; Strategic planning; Stress (Psychology); Structural equation modeling; Tolls; Travel behavior; Travel demand; Trip purpose; User charges

San Francisco Bay Area Water Transit Authority

Models

Environment; Finance; Marine Transportation; Policy; Public Transportation; Society

TRIS, TRB

May 5 2006 2:43PM

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