Mapping Potential Metro Rail Ridership In Los Angeles County

Abstract

Los Angeles County, as in many metropolitan areas, is coping with increasing street and highway traffic. Transit, and particularly rail, often is regarded as a strategy to help reduce urban traffic congestion especially in these economic downturn times, the rising price of gasoline and the acute awareness of global warming. The objectives of this paper are to identify the total potential riders who have access by walking to the Metro Rail, and the level of utilization, using the process of Trip Generation for data research. The potential ridership produced and attracted to each station is estimated using certain assumptions about the number of trips possibly generated by each person from residential and employment regions, based on the Origin-Destination (OD) flow patterns. Estimating the number of potential riders accessing the Metro Rail System involves a spatial analysis regarding the location of current Metro Rail stations serving populations in a reasonable access time by walking. Service Area Zones (SAZ) were mapped, representing the areas that the potential riders could be served by existing stations within a ten minute interval. The potential ridership was measured to be approximately one million, which represents a figure ten times larger than the present one. The results of the analysis were used to build an Atlas of Los Angeles County Ridership as the cartographic contribution in transportation and visual communication for transit forecasting and service planning of the system.