NEARC Fall 2017

AUTHORS: Mark Hoover*, Mark Goetz, and George Obeng – CT Metropolitan Council of Governments

ABSTRACT: As a transportation planning agency, we are tasked with modeling the movement of people and goods in our region. While much of this activity leverages road and rail networks to model movement, it does not adequately represent all modes of transportation. For example, when modeling pedestrian transit choices, ¼ and ½ mile buffers from existing bus routes are used as surrogates to model walksheds and accessibly to transit. This crude approach often has confusing results. To most accurately model movement we built a robust multimodal network. The network includes vehicular, rail, bus, ferry, bicycle, and pedestrian travel. This presentation will detail the labor-intensive process of creating the feature classes for each mode of transportation (sidewalks, bus routes, etc.) as well as modeling the travel speed and connectivity in the network. We will also discuss preliminary routing and service area results using different modes of transportation and how we are using that information to guide decision making with local transit authorities.