Paper Details

TRB 89th Annual Meeting (January 10-14, 2010)

Event Number:	548
Event Title:	Developing Ridership for Bus Rapid Transit
Event Date:	Jan 12 2010 3:45PM- 5:30PM
Event Location:	Hilton, Jefferson West
Event Description:	The implementation of BRT will at times depend on the ridership that can be generated. These papers discuss actions that can be taken to increase ridership and ways to forecast such increases. The paper on intangible service attributes will be of special interest to those developing Small Starts applications or engaged in travel forecasting for BRT.
Event Agenda:

Direct Ridership Model of Bus Rapid Transit in Los Angeles County, California (10-0108)

A Direct Ridership Model (DRM) for predicting Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) patronage in Southern California is estimated. Attributes of bus stops and their surroundings constitute the data observations of the DRM, enabling a fairly fine-resolution of analysis to be carried out on factors that influence ridership. The best-fitting DRM revealed that service frequency strongly influences BRT patronage in Los Angeles County. High intermodal connectivity, with both feeder bus routes and rail-transit services, also significantly induces BRT travel. Population densities also contribute to BRT patronage and in the case of exclusive-lane BRT services, higher employment densities further increase higher daily boardings. The strong statistical fit of the model bodes well for DRM as a platform for estimating BRT patronage in coming years.

Authors
     Cervero, Robert , University of California, Berkeley
     Murakami, Jin , University of California at Berkeley
     Miller, Mark A., University of California (Ret.)