1. T-BEST Nothing But the BEST for Transit Planning and Ridership Forecasting TBAG, October 28, 2004

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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  Route type  Frequency  Technology  Span of service  Special generators  Transfers  Time of day  Wait time, transfer time  In-vehicle time

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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!