Lead Presenter:  Jessica Klion | Project Manager & Senior Transportation Planner | Foursquare ITP​​​​​​​

Presentation Description
The rise of app-based transportation options presents transit agencies with opportunities to create more flexible services for their passengers, including microtransit; however, successfully implementing flexible transit services requires new knowledge on the contexts in which they succeed. In addition to an understanding of the environmental characteristics that make an area suitable for microtransit, practitioners must engage in nuanced planning to integrate fixed-route and microtransit services, and the optimal arrangement of these services greatly depends on the needs and goals of the communities they serve. This session will help practitioners understand how and where microtransit could fit into their service delivery model; attendees will learn about the fundamentals of microtransit services, alongside the principles and processes for conducting a microtransit suitability analysis to identify opportunities to bring this model to their service area.

Lessons learned from research conducted by the National Center for Applied Transit Technology (N-CATT) and Foursquare Integrated Transportation Planning (Foursquare ITP) will provide insight into how microtransit services can be developed, prioritized, and evaluated. Critically, these case studies introduce the questions planners must ask to understand how microtransit service models can meet local needs, and carry planning through the implementation process.

To equip attendees with the tools needed to plan microtransit zones, this session will demonstrate the development of a suitability analysis using GIS. This analysis synthesizes demographics, which inform an understanding of transit propensity, and the potential for transit service, based on the density of residents and jobs, to identify the areas most appropriate for microtransit services. Based on the results of this microtransit propensity analysis, attendees will learn how to draw potential zones and evaluate them against one another.

Ultimately, this session will help attendees understand the benefits of microtransit in appropriate contexts; learn from examples of other agencies’ deployments; the high-level process of developing microtransit zones; as well as the steps and data needed for analyzing a service area. Following this session, attendees should feel equipped to take the next steps in exploring microtransit suitability planning and implementation where it makes sense for their agencies.

  Co-presenter(s): 

Andrew Carpenter
National Center for Applied Transit Technology (N-CATT)

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