T-BEST
Nothing But the BEST for
Transit Planning and Ridership Forecasting
TBAG, October 28, 2004
Research Project Team
 Ram M. Pendyala
Dept of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Univ of South Florida, Tampa
 Steve Polzin and Xuehao Chu
Center for Urban Trans Research (CUTR), Univ of South Florida, Tampa
 Software Development: Rodney Bunner
Geodecisions, Inc., Tampa
 Wade White* and Seongsoon Yun*
Gannett Fleming, Inc.
 Fadi Nassar
Keith & Schnars PA, Fort Lauderdale
 Project Manager: Ike Ubaka
Public Transit Office, Florida Dept of Transportation, Tallahassee
History of Transit Model Development
 FDOT Public Transit Office very proactive in transit
planning tool development
 TLOS and FTIS examples of transit planning and
information tools
 Transit ridership modeling tools
 ITSUP:
Integrated Transit Demand & Supply Model
 RTFAST: Regional Transit Feasibility Analysis & Simulation
Tool
 Towards stop-level ridership forecasting models
T-BEST Arc 1.1
 Model estimates number of boardings at a stop by:
 Route
 Direction
 Time period
 Model estimates two types of boardings:
 Direct Boardings: Walk and Bike Access
 Transfer Boardings: Transit Access
 ESRI ArcGIS based transit network mapping and
coding capability
T-BEST Arc: A Sophisticated Planning Tool
 T-BEST Arc accounts for:
 Population and employment at stop
 Accessible population and employment from stop
 Route attributes
 Fare
 Frequency
 Span of service
 Transfers
 Wait time, transfer time
 In-vehicle time
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Route type
Technology
Special generators
Time of day
Role of Accessibility and Connectivity
 Transit ridership strongly affected by:
 Destination accessibility
 Temporal availability
 Network connectivity
 Competing and complementary stops
 T-BEST sensitive to all four aspects of transit
accessibility
 Ability to test effects of alternative route and
network design configurations on transit boardings
 Sophisticated methodology in T-BEST
Model and Software Functionality
 T-BEST provides user-friendly interfaces and
functionality:
 GIS
interface for database setup and displays
 Sets of default equations by time period
 Automated buffering
 Automated accessibility and impedance computations
 Report generation including performance measures
T-BEST Arc Software
 T-BEST 1.1 software development complete
 Model estimation using APC data from Jacksonville
 Statewide Census 2000 data included
 Full GIS functionality for drawing/coding transit
routes
 Complete users guide available
 Training @ USF Engineering Computer Lab on
Wednesday, December 8, 2004 – Stay Tuned!