Identifier

etd-06212006-113212

Degree

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Geography and Anthropology

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

Over the past four decades public transit usage has declined in the United States. Transit Planners have suggested that public transit usage should be encouraged because public transit can account for greater travel demand than cars and would reduce pollution, traffic congestion and energy consumption. Easy access to public transit stops is important because research has found that usage of public transit and access are inversely proportional. U.S. transit systems have a relatively high density of stops resulting in high accessibility levels at the cost of increased travel times. In this study access distance to transit stops and bus stop spacing were used as the basis to examine the inefficiencies, indicated by the redundancy in the number of bus stops, for the Capital Area Transit System (CATS) of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. The Distance Constrained P-Median Problem model was used. Based on the bus stop spacing standard of 300-600 m it was found that the interpreted increase in average bus stop spacing for the suggested minimum number of bus stops along all the routes was 617.97 m. Also, it was found that on average for all the routes, about 74.68 % bus stops can be reduced for the 400 m access standard. The suggested reduction in the number of bus stops will not sacrifice the current level of geographic coverage and would not increase the average access distance to bus stops beyond the accepted standard of 400 m.

Date

2006

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

Nina S.-N. Lam

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_theses.661

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