A Composite Index of Public Transit Accessibility

TLDR

Measuring ease of access to transit services is important for evaluating services, predicting travel demand, allocating investments, and guiding land‑use decisions. The study develops a composite index that weights individual accessibility methods to provide a robust, uniformly applicable measure for planners to identify service gaps and promote equity. The index combines readily available accessibility metrics from developer, planner, and operator perspectives, reviews existing methods, selects three for a Meriden, Connecticut case study, and applies weighting factors to produce the composite measure. The authors find inconsistencies among the selected methods and introduce a consistent grading scale to standardize scores.

Abstract

Measuring ease of access to transit services is important in evaluating existing services, predicting travel demands, allocating transportation investments, and making decisions on land development. A composite index to assessing accessibility of public transit is described. It involves use of readily-available methods and represents a more holistic measure of transit accessibility, integrating developer, planner, and operator perspectives. The paper reviews previous and current methods of measuring accessibility and selects three methods for application in a case study in Meriden, Connecticut. Inconsistencies are noted across the methods, and a consistent grading scale is presented to standardize scores. Finally, this paper proposes weighting factors for individual methods to formulate a composite measure based on individual accessibility component measures. The approach aims to provide a robust and uniformly applicable measure that can be interpreted easily by planners to identify shortcomings in service coverage and promote equity in transit accessibility in the community.