1. GOING NOWHERE FAST? Roy Samaan 14 March 2011 UP 206 A Effects of Service Reduction on Transit Quality

2. Roadmap  Research Basis  Review of Previous Conclusions  Examination of New Variables  Use of New Variables to Construct Transit Quality Index  Summary of Findings  Conclusion  Need for Refinement  Questions

3. Central Policy Questions  Does the elimination of METRO bus lines significantly degrade access to transit?  How is quality of transit in most transit dependent tracts affected?  Are there existing alternatives to eliminated service?

4. Poverty Rates Around Cancelled Lines

5. Poverty Rates Around Existing Rapid Lines

6. DEC 2010: Access Maintained, Quality Reduced  Only East/West Rapid Buses connecting SE LA & SW LA are eliminated & replaced with local service  Rapids connected high poverty areas with transit hubs & job centers

7. No Additional East/West Rapids Within 1mile of Cancelled Rapid Lines  Standard walk distance is ¼ mile  Cancelled North/South Rapids are within1 mile of existing Rapid service

8. Cancelled Rapid Lines Are in High Usage Corridors  Transit usage in study area high among those earning less than $65k  Indicates strong preference for public transit, if not outright transit dependency

9. Poverty is Useful For Predicting Need, Not Quality of Service  Quality of Service based on multiple factors:  Congestion, transit dependency factors, and speed of rapid bus relative to local bus contribute to service quality  Combining indexed Need Factors and Congestion Factors Gives a rough estimate of service quality

10. Generation of Need Index  Need Index = (% Poverty in tract + % under 18 + % 65 and up + Usage Intensity)  Weighted towards toward FTA-defined transit dependency variables  Intensity of use given slightly more weight than other factors

11. Comparison of Need Score vs. Poverty  Highest need scores do not correlate directly to highest poverty  Cancelled rapid lines covered need areas not currently covered by existing rapid service

12. Calculation of Congestion Index  Factors examined include:  Existing bus stop density, local line density, rapid line density, roadway density and took into account rapid line speed relative to local line speed  Densities were calculated using the following formula:  Attribute Density = (Attribute/Area)*(Population/Area) => [Attribute *population/(Area*Area)]  Spatial joins, field calculator and field geometry used to generate data  Stop density and road density weighted least; rapid density highest

13. How does Congestion Score Correlated to Poverty?  High poverty tracts around cancelled east/west lines are only moderately congested relative to DTLA & SFV

14. Combining Need Index and Congestion Index  Very few High Need areas also had high congestion  However, the higher the poverty rate, the higher the average index scores

15. Creating Transit Quality Index  Need Index scores were weighted slightly higher than Congestion Index scores  Calculated TQI for each census tract  It looks like this….

16. Computation of Transit Quality Index

17. Countywide Transit Quality Scores  Cancelled rapid lines were an efficient way to get from one low transit quality area to another

18. Summary of Findings  Does the elimination of METRO bus lines significantly degrade access to transit? No.  How is quality of transit in most transit dependent tracts affected? Negatively.  Are there existing alternatives to eliminated service? Yes for north/south Rapid lines; No for east/west Rapid lines

19. Conclusions  Cancelled rapid lines, especially east/west lines, served high poverty riders  These lines served census tracts with high need scores and with lower congestion costs than other parts of the city  The loss of these lines reduces the transit quality in southeast and southwest Los Angeles

20. Necessary Refinement  Both Need and Congestion Indices only give rough estimates  Correlating high index scores with demographic data beyond poverty rates  Analysis of forthcoming and proposed (30/10) rail lines

21. Questions?