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Recently, there have been growing concerns about the negative impacts of rising automobile use and road congestion on personal mobility, safety, air quality and climate change. To address these issues, special attention has been given to improving and expanding transit services in order to attract new riders and retain existing ones. Despite these efforts, transit ridership across Canada has been levelling-off and, in many cases, declining over the past few years. The goal of this study is to provide an empirical investigation of variables that affect variations in transit ridership among transit systems and over time. To achieve this goal, the study used a comprehensive longitudinal dataset of different factors collected from 103 transit agencies in Canada between 2002 and 2016. Two-stage least square (2SLS) models were developed for the purpose of the study. The results suggest that transit ridership (in terms of number of linked trips) in Canada is associated with several factors that differ according to transit agency size. These factors include built environment and socioeconomic aspects in addition to transit supply attributes. Additionally, ride-sharing systems (i.e., Uber service) have a mixed impact on ridership that varies according to the size of transit system. The presence of Uber within large transit agencies service areas is shown to have a small positive impact on ridership, while it is negatively associated with ridership for small transit agencies. This paper provides policy makers and planners with useful policy-relevant information related to the association between different factors and transit ridership. • The paper investigates the variables affecting ridership in Canada. • It uses a longitudinal dataset of various factors collected from 103 transit agencies. • Two-stage least square (2SLS) models were developed for the study. • Ridership is related to several factors that differ according to transit agency size. • Ride-sharing systems (i.e., Uber service) have a mixed impact on ridership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main challenges facing transit agencies is offering reliable service with minimum number of interruptions and ensuing delays. Although this issue has recently emerged as a top priority in many cities to ensure sustainable social and environmental progress, there has been little research effort to investigate issues surrounding service disruption. As a response to this gap, this study aims at understanding the impact of outdoor track segments (or open-air sectors) of the metro system and weather conditions on the number of service interruptions and the magnitude of resulting delays at the stop level. The study uses detailed metro system interruption data collected in 2013 by the TTC, the public transit provider in the City of Toronto, Canada. Descriptive statistics and statistical models are developed for the purpose of the study. The empirical investigation reveals that outdoor tracks have a statistically significant association with metro system's service interruptions. Longer outdoor track distances are linked to both higher frequencies and delays of service interruptions. Weather conditions, in terms of the amount of snow on the ground and rainfall interactions with outdoor tracks, have also a significant association with the frequency and duration of service interruptions. The paper results provide policy makers and planners with useful policy-relevant information related to the impact of outdoor tracks and weather conditions on the metro system interruptions that could be used to support higher capital investments when planning rail transit systems to achieve the system resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-quality transit service is a vital aspect of any modern city. When unexpected interruptions to the transit service occur, they reduce the quality of service provided to the public. One of the main strategies that is employed to deal with rail service interruptions is “bus bridging,” whereby buses from scheduled services are deployed to offer shuttle services. Very few efforts are found in the literature that have investigated this policy’s effectiveness. Therefore, this study aims at exploring the different aspects and impacts of retracting buses from scheduled services in response to subway and streetcar service interruptions in Toronto. It explores the size of the deployment, as well as the system response and recovery times using detailed subway and streetcar shuttle service reports collected in 2015. The paper shows remarkable fluctuations not only in the utilized number of shuttle service buses over time, but also on the service response and recovery times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transit agencies are consistently trying to improve service reliability and attract new passengers by employing various strategies. Previous literature reviews have focused on either passengers' or transit agencies' perspectives on service reliability. However, none of the earlier reviews have simultaneously addressed these differing perspectives on service reliability in an integrated manner. In response to this gap in the literature, this paper first reviews previous work on passengers' perspectives of transit service reliability and their response to service adjustments made by different agencies. Second, it analyzes transit agencies' plans and reports regarding their reliability goals and used strategies in order to improve service reliability, while looking at the impacts of these strategies on service. Reviewing these two parts together provides a needed contribution to the literature from a practical viewpoint since it allows for the identification of gaps in the public transit planning and operations field in the area of reliability and provides transit planners and decision makers with effective and valuable policy-relevant information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several factors contribute to short-duration unscheduled absences of bus transit drivers. This article aims to understand these factors at the aggregate level and to anticipate future total absence that will need to be filled for a large-size transit operator. The aggregate level is defined as the total number of regular driver absences per garage, day of week and time period that need to be covered by the extraboards. This study analyzes absenteeism data obtained from OC Transpo, the transit provider of the city of Ottawa, Canada. A multilevel regression model is generated to investigate regular drivers' absences. The short-unscheduled absence is estimated in relation to temporal factors, drivers' personal characteristics, aspects of assigned work, and service delivery characteristics. Furthermore, using the model's coefficients, sensitivity analyses are conducted to demonstrate the advantages of this technique over traditional ones adopted by various transit agencies. This study provides transit planners and policy makers with a practical methodology that can be used to support extraboard planning practice and help reduce the incidence of missed trips due to absences while having the appropriate size of extraboard drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impacts of transit improvement strategies on bus emissions along a busy corridor in Montreal, Canada. The local transit provider, Société de Transport de Montréal, has implemented a number of strategies which include the use of smart cards, limited-stop (express bus) service, and reserved bus lanes along this corridor. Using data collected on-board for instantaneous speeds and stop-level ridership, we estimated bus emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants at three levels: road segment, bus-stop, and per passenger. A regression of segment-level emissions against a number of explanatory variables reveals that reserved bus lanes and express bus service reduce emissions significantly. On the other hand, smart card use reduces idling emissions compared to other fare payment methods. Our findings are of most relevance for transit planners who are seeking to implement different strategies to reduce emissions and improve transit performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Transit agencies implement many strategies in order to provide an attractive transportation service. This article aims to evaluate the impacts of implementing a combination of strategies, designed to improve the bus transit service, on running time and passenger satisfaction. These strategies include using smart card fare collection, introducing limited-stop bus service, implementing reserved bus lanes, using articulated buses, and implementing transit signal priority (TSP). This study uses stop-level data collected from the Société de transport de Montréal (STM)’s automatic vehicle location (AVL) and automatic passenger count (APC) systems, in Montréal, Canada. The combination of these strategies has lead to a 10.5% decline in running time along the limited stop service compared to the regular service. The regular route running time has increased by 1% on average compared to the initial time period. The study also shows that riders are generally satisfied with the service improvements. They tend to overestimate the savings associated with the implementation of this combination of strategies by 3.5–6.0min and by 2.5–4.1min for both the regular route and the limited stop service, respectively. This study helps transit planners and policy makers to better understand the effects of implementing a combination of strategies to improve running time and passenger’s perception of these changes in service. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Local transit accessibility measures are important tools used by planners to understand the effects of changes to public transit systems. Several local transit accessibility measures exist in the literature, however, it is not clear how these measures relate to public transit usage. Therefore, the aim of this study is to evaluate several transit accessibility measures that are commonly used in the literature by examining their associations with ridership levels at the dissemination area level. The assessed transit accessibility measures ranged from a basic stop count, to gravity-based measures which use distance decay functions from a local household survey, and Walkscore.com's Transit Score. Using several land use and transit service datasets, including data collected from the fare box systems onboard the Saskatoon Transit buses, three types of models were tested. These models include ordinary least square models (OLS), spatial lag models (SLM), and spatial error models (SEM). The results from the models suggest that we can more closely predict actual public transit ridership when including a gravity-based accessibility measure in the model, while controlling for several household socioeconomic factors and built environment characteristics. In all cases, the measure that best fit the variation in ridership was the filtered frequency accessibility measure calculated using a 400 m network buffer and a Butterworth filter with a distance decay bandpass value of 250 m. This study offers transit planners and practitioners a better understanding of the performance of different transit local accessibility measures in relationship to actual transit ridership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social equity is increasingly incorporated as a long-term objective into urban transportation plans. Researchers use accessibility measures to assess equity issues, such as determining the amount of jobs reachable by marginalized groups within a defined travel time threshold and compare these measures across socioeconomic categories. However, allocating public transit resources in an equitable manner is not only related to travel time, but also related to the out-of-pocket cost of transit, which can represent a major barrier to accessibility for many disadvantaged groups. Therefore, this research proposes a set of new accessibility measures that incorporates both travel time and transit fares. It then applies those measures to determine whether people residing in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods in Montreal, Canada experience the same levels of transit accessibility as those living in other neighborhoods. Results are presented in terms of regional accessibility and trends by social indicator decile. Travel time accessibility measures estimate a higher number of jobs that can be reached compared to combined travel time and cost measures. However, the degree and impact of these measures varies across the social deciles. Compared to other groups in the region, residents of socially disadvantaged areas have more equitable accessibility to jobs using transit; this is reflected in smaller decreases in accessibility when fare costs are included. Generating new measures of accessibility combining travel time and transit fares provides more accurate measures that can be easily communicated by transportation planners and engineers to policy makers and the public since it translates accessibility measures to a dollar value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public transportation systems generate economic benefits that can potentially reduce social disparities between populations when such benefits are distributed evenly within a region. However, the achievement of equity in the allocation of public resources is not easy to accomplish for land use and transportation planning agencies. This research seeks to determine whether people residing in socially disadvantaged areas in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), Canada, experience the same levels of transit accessibility as those living in other areas over the course of a day. Comparisons are presented in terms of regional accessibility, trends by social decile, spatial distribution of accessibility during the day, and travel time impacts. Findings suggest that residents in socially disadvantaged areas have equitable if not better transit accessibility to jobs than socially advantaged groups, and this is reflected in shorter travel times. However, the degree and impact of this advantage varies over the course of the day. Findings from this research can be of interest to transportation planners, engineers, and policy makers as it highlights deficiencies with current equity assessment practices that do not take into account variation in transit services over a 24-h time period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies evaluating the impacts of transport interventions on accessibility to healthcare have largely overlooked competition among patients for limited resources and the tendency to use healthcare located closer to them (i.e., distance decay effects). This study aims to demonstrate how overlooking supply-demand dynamics and distance decay effects can distort the evaluation of a new public transit service's impacts on healthcare accessibility and inequalities. Specifically, using a new bus rapid transit (BRT) service in Columbus, Ohio, USA, as an example, we compare three types of measures: 1) cumulative-opportunity, 2) multimodal two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA), and 3) multimodal generalized 2SFCA (G2SFCA) accessibility metrics. To understand the similarities in results obtained from different accessibility measures, we use the Pearson correlation coefficients of standardized accessibility change scores. Further, we leverage an inequality index, the Palma ratios, to examine how inequality assessments can be sensitive to the choice of accessibility measure. The correlation analysis reveals notable differences among the three measures. This indicates that neglecting supply-demand dynamics and distance decay effects can lead to differences in results, potentially distorting transit project evaluations and misleading stakeholders. Moreover, although overall conclusions about inequalities are largely consistent, we observed nuanced and statistically significant differences in Palma ratios when derived from cumulative-opportunity metrics compared to the multimodal 2SFCA and multimodal generalized 2SFCA measures. Our findings underscore the importance of considering supply-demand dynamics and distance decay effects for a more realistic and accurate assessment of new transit service's impacts on healthcare accessibility and inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether different types of accessibility measures can perform similarly when evaluating changes in accessibility before and after transport interventions. Specifically, we compare three types of placed-based accessibility approaches: 1) cumulative-opportunity, 2) gravity-based, and 3) hybrid of the two. We conduct a comprehensive comparison of 12 accessibility measures by combining different operational forms, impedance functions, and parameters to see if the results of project appraisals are sensitive to the choice of accessibility measure. For case studies, we consider two scenarios in Canada: new bus rapid transit (BRT) services in Vancouver and transit system redesign (TSR) in Edmonton. We carry out high spatio-temporal resolution accessibility analyses based on General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) datasets through an open-source transit analytics tool. Results demonstrate that the three types of measures perform differently when evaluating changes in accessibility pre and post transit interventions. Accessibility change scores generated by cumulative-opportunity measures are notably different from those produced by gravity-based and hybrid measures. Also, the capability of cumulative-opportunity approach in capturing the geographic extent of areas affected by transit interventions is limited. We found that the project appraisal results can even change from positive to negative or vice versa, depending on the chosen accessibility measure. We recommend an analyst test several types of accessibility measure with a range of parameters for a more robust evaluation on the impacts of new public transit services on accessibility. We share our code and data to promote reproducible transportation science in planning practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to examine the degree to which the results of social equity analysis on public transit reliability are sensitive to the choice of spatial unit of analysis (i.e., modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP)). Using the city of Winnipeg as an example, we investigate the social equity of bus on-time performance (OTP), and pass-up distribution at multiple levels (e.g., stop, route, neighborhood) and compare the results. Neighborhoods are classified as minority vs. non-minority population dominant neighborhoods and transit routes and stops are classified into minority vs. non-minority population serving ones according to the socioeconomics of residents. We conduct an equity assessment by calculating 1) the number of pass-ups, 2) the number of bus deviations (e.g., early arrivals, delays) from the predetermined schedule, and 3) the average deviations time (in seconds) that occurred on minority vs. non-minority serving routes/stops as well as in minority vs. non-minority dominant neighborhoods. We also consider different day types (e.g., weekdays, weekends) and disability status (e.g., wheelchair, regular passengers) in the equity assessment. While the route-level results depict that transit service reliability is equitable, results of the neighborhood and stop-level analysis reveal inequities in the distribution of the OTP and pass-ups in the city. Our findings demonstrate that different levels of spatial aggregation can significantly change the results of social equity analysis of public transit reliability, thereby leading to incomplete conclusions that inadequately capture the inequity due to the existence of MAUP. The results of this paper provide insights to transit authorities, planners, and policymakers for diagnosing the social equity landscape of transit reliability in a more robust manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]