TTSAT: A New Approach to Mapping Transit Accessibility

Abstract

Transit agencies have never had an accurate indicator of the extent of their service area based on riders’ door-to-door travel time. Tis is an important gap in knowl- edge, because travel time is one of the most important factors determining whether or not people will use public transit. Tis paper presents a powerful new travel time- based method to visualize and analyze transit service coverage—a computer appli- cation called the Time-Based Transit Service Area Tool (TTSAT). Unlike other service area metrics, TTSAT incorporates total trip travel time into the transit service area maps it generates. To make these travel-time estimates realistic, TTSAT integrates all segments of a complete, door-to-door transit trip into the trip time calculations. TTSAT’s mapping and analysis capabilities offer numerous potential applications for planners, developers, and members of the public working to create transit-accessible communities.