Impact of Transit System Design on Job Accessibility of Choice and Transit Dependent Riders

The three major research questions are: What factors influence ridership for different types of transit systems? Is there a relationship between transit system design and accessibility? Does one type of transit system design provide greater accessibility to transit dependent riders than choice riders? For answering these research questions the author first developed the transit demand model for the four different transit systems in the study area of the 5-county Atlanta region. Then the author calculated the accessibility provided by each of these transit systems to the transit dependent and choice riders and pointed out the areas that have a high ridership potential using the distance decay parameter obtained from the demand model. Lastly the author presented the findings from the telephone interviews of the region's policy makers, elected officials and transit agencies about their perspective and assessment of the transit system and its future which helps explain the difference in transit service quality that exists in the region. The author finds that multidestination bus riders are more likely to come from regions with lower vehicle ownership as compared to the riders of the radial rail, radial bus or express buses. Rail seems to provide the highest accessibility to the region but is very expensive to construct new or extend existing rail routes. The multidestination system provides the highest levels of accessibility among the bus systems and it is much less expensive to expand The interviewees consider the existing system to be fair, but suggest the need of image makeover and have hopes from the new leadership of MARTA. They also want to work together to build a truly regional transit system to compete with other growing world cities in attracting talent and businesses by providing them with better transportation options, but money and control issues crop up when collaborating for regional transit. Transit agencies do not want state oversight in local transit planning either.