Reaching Jobs in the Suburbs: Tri-Rail in South Florida

Abstract

Continued expansion of development into suburban areas has led to increased suburb-to-suburb travel, which has contributed to the relative decline in ridership of commuter rail systems from the suburbs to the central business district (CBD). If commuter rail is to remain a viable element of the urban transportation network, it must serve new markets. The potential of commuter rail to serve suburb-to-suburb markets is examined. The size of the potential market for suburb-to-suburb commuter rail travel is estimated and compared with that of the suburb-to-CBD market. The mean market penetration is compared for suburb-to-suburb and suburb-to-CBD markets to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between the two markets. The relationship between station-to-station distance and market penetration is tested for both the suburb-to-suburb and suburb-to-CBD markets. The results of this study indicate that the total potential ridership market for suburb-to-suburb home-based work trips is comparable with that for suburb-to-CBD homebased work trips. However, market penetration is greater for suburb-to-CBD trips than for suburb-to-suburb trips. Market penetration is found to increase with distance; however, initial results indicate that other factors affect market penetration more than distance.