A GEOSPATIAL ANALYSIS ON THE ACCESSIBILITY CHARACTERISTICS OF TRANSIT TRANSFERS

Abstract

This Master?s thesis presents an empirical analysis for the accessibility characteristics of the transit transfer based on the geospatial and topological features of the transit system.

Transit transfer activities have been widely investigated around the world in recent decades. Considering transfers actually duplicate the number of passengers within the complete travelling pattern, we are interested in finding what kind of characteristics will have a significant impact on the accessibility of transit transfers over variously located bus stops. In this way, based on the transit faring records and the layout of transit networking infrastructures, an empirical study has been implemented in a macroscopic scope. The findings reveal the inner relationship between the distributions of transit transfer and the geospatial and topological features of the transit system, which indicates some potential improvements of the transit level of service in terms of the transfer activities.

The major contributions of this empirical study are 1) proposed and defined a list of influencing accessibility characteristics towards the transit transfer in both geospatial and topological measures; 2) summarized and described how the proposed characteristics will influence the actual transit transfer accessibility; 3)implemented a linear regression based analysis framework towards the proposed characteristics while using a stepwise AIC to eliminate the irrelevant ones; 4) proposed an approximation algorithm for the detection of transfer activities while no swiping card record is available when the passengers alight the buses.