Federal Transit Administration Research Articles

Experimentally Determined Force Density Spectra for Admittance-Based Vibration Predictions along Railways

The planning application and approval process of railway tracks is generally accompanied by a vibration immission assessment. Starting with the source spectrum, which is ideally obtained through measurements, the German guideline VDI 3837 recommends a series of multiplications using transfer spectra which account for the various subdomains of the wave propagation path, such as the effect of the superstructure, the free field propagation, the soil-structure coupling and the transmission inside buildings. Typically, these one-third octave spectra are an average over empirical reference values. While simplified empirical relations are prone to a large variance, the use of artificial vibration sources allows the actual vibration transmission behavior from the tracks to the immission points to be quantified. Using so-called transfer admittances, also known as transfer mobilities, which account for all dynamic interactions along the transmission path (track, tunnel structures, foundations, structural properties), together with force density spectra for relevant rail vehicles, the authors investigate the practical application of the method presented in Report No. 0123 of the Federal Transit Administration (2018) for the frequency range 5–200 Hz. The article demonstrates how such force density spectra were obtained for the most common train types in the Austrian rail network at two different track sections using artificial vibration sources. Furthermore, practical aspects are discussed and a recently developed approximation method for estimating line transfer admittances from point transfer admittances using simplified models is introduced.

Racial Representation and Diversity on Non-Elected Transit Advisory Bodies

Non-elected advisory and planning bodies of transit agencies help planners determine the agency’s service, operations, and future developments. The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) requires reporting of the racial and ethnic makeup of those bodies to receive federal funding. This paper collects those data and compares them with the service area demographics of those agencies. This paper is an attempt to determine if those bodies are representative of the people they serve. This paper sets forth possible metrics to judge representation by and finds that most bodies in the United States are not representative, and instead over-represent the white population. This implication suggests that people of color in the United States are not being represented in the decision-making and planning processes of the transit agencies that serve them.

Transit Safety System Evaluation and Hotspot Identification Empowered by Edge Computing Transit Event Logging System

This paper discusses the importance of near-crash events and associated metadata as valuable sources for smart transit applications, such as surrogate safety measures for transit safety research. The STAR Lab at the University of Washington, sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration, has developed an edge computing system that processes onboard videos for near-crash detection. This paper builds on previous work by addressing two research questions: first, how to leverage the near-crash detection system to synthesize rich data sources on transit vehicles, and second, how to use the smart data hub to support transit operation and safety studies. The proposed procedures for event-based transit data collection, evaluation of commercial collision avoidance warning systems (CAWS) technologies, and transit safety hotspot identification are detailed. CAWS’ performance was benchmarked on four transit buses that were operated for almost a year in Pierce County, WA, U.S. Furthermore, the meta-information of near-crash events enables hotspot analysis and the identification of several exemplar clusters that can be explained by driver behavior and roadway geometries. The results of the experiments demonstrate the system’s promising performance and its applicability to addressing various transit operation questions.

Bus network redesigns and public transit equity analysis: Evaluating system-wide changes in Richmond, Virginia

Public transit agencies around the world are increasingly using bus network redesigns (BNRs) to address ongoing ridership declines, but little is known about the equity impacts of these redesigns on vulnerable populations most likely to use transit to meet their daily needs. Despite Federal Transit Administration requirements for public transit agencies to assess the equity impacts of major service changes (like BNRs), analysis results are often perfunctory and unsatisfying. The academic literature has also proposed and evaluated many different performance measures in the context of equity evaluations. In this paper, we investigate a controversial BNR undertaken in Richmond, Virginia. During the planning and implementation process, different analysts reached different conclusions about potential impacts. We employ different performance measures, including service area and access changes, to show that the redesign is largely equitable but baseline levels of accessibility for vulnerable groups remain low. We also argue that a complete understanding of BNR impacts requires examining off-peak times. Meaningful public engagement is crucial for any equity analysis since the results can change substantially depending on the chosen parameters, and these parameters should be chosen by those most affected by a BNR.

Assessing Transit Station Area Redevelopment: A Case Study of the Lindbergh Station in Atlanta

This article assesses the land-use, demographic, circulation, and economic development attributes of transit station area development. Findings from this assessment are applied to the Lindbergh Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) Station area in Atlanta, Georgia, for which a private-public partnership is currently being negotiated. Recommendations for the redevelopment of the Lindbergh Station area are provided, including a schematic design that integrates those recommendations. The resulting recommendations are intended to maximize the likelihood for transit ridership and economic benefit while offsetting traffic congestion and vehicle emissions—in keeping with the objectives of the Federal Transit Administration’s Livable Communities Initiative. A safe and inviting walking environment throughout a station area—extending well beyond the area of physical redevelopment itself—is fundamental to achieving these objectives. Existing barrier effects and lack of pedestrian connectivity associated with major transportation corridors within the Lindbergh Station area will significantly offset transportation and environmental benefits on which public investment in the redevelopment is predicated. Solutions are required that provide not only safer street crossings, but a larger proportion of rights-of-way devoted to pedestrian movement and the development of a “street life. “ Priority should be given to pedestrian improvements that increase access to transit for traditionally underserved populations. Finally, open space is required to effectively compete with other more auto-dependent areas and to draw higher income populations to transit station areas.

Bus Semirapid Transit Mode Development and Evaluation

With little investment required for operating in streets, bus services are often designed to serve many overlapping routes with frequent stops. To upgrade services and attract choice riders, major bus routes should be provided with exclusive lanes, preferential signals, and fewer but more distinct stops.The Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) program is aimed at upgrading bus services into semirapid transit category (technically, bus semi-rapid transit). Many similar programs in the past were initially successful but later degraded by allowing sharing of lanes by high-occupancy vehicles (HOV) and relaxed enforcement of traffic control. With the systems approach organized for the BRT program, implementation chances will be greatly enhanced. It is expected that a successful BRT program will have a positive impact on many other bus services. Improved bus services should be seen as a significant step to higher-quality, attractive transit services which will represent major lines in smaller cities or complementary lines with rail transit in larger ones.

The Characteristics of Shopping Trips by Bus Transit

This paper presents a summary of the findings of a one-year research project that was sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and conducted on the characteristics of shopping trips using bus transit. The study involved the collection of extensive amounts of data on shopping trips and on the shoppers themselves in a large sampling area in California. It describes the integrated environment a shopper faces starting from his or her home and ending at the entrance of a mall. This includes analyzing the distances from home to bus stops, travel time on the bus, frequency of transfers, and the walking environment from bus stops to mall entrances. Also characterized are the distributions of shoppers and bus users on the basis of gender and age and the implications of these distributions in regard to what should be improved in bus service. Several other attributes of shoppers and shopping trips were collected, analyzed, and included in the recommendations. A total of 45 malls, 22 transit authorities and more than 1,000 shoppers were surveyed through relatively lengthy questionnaires for their opinions and for data on a wide range of issues. The most important finding of this work is that no organized or significant efforts exist between mall operators and transit authorities, to continuously monitor and improve shopping by bus, especially in regard to the location of bus stops around malls and the safety and convenience of the walking environment for a shopper who uses the bus and walks to and from the mall entrance.

Characteristics of Bus Rapid Transit Projects: An Overview

During the previous century the public transit industry has struggled with mode and technology issues. Bus and rail have alternated in primacy as operating conditions and financial necessity have pressured operators to seek more cost-effective means of moving passengers. Federal, state, and local financial resources have been outstripped by candidate rapid transit projects, traffic congestion is a growing problem, and travel patterns are becoming increasingly dispersed. In seeking to fill the gap between conventional bus service and rail projects of all kinds, the transit industry in cooperation with the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has placed renewed emphasis on the development of alternatives that reflect a return to the transportation system management approach. Equipped with new tools for improving operating and management productivity of highway and transit networks, transportation agencies are working cooperatively to simulate exclusive rights-of-way operations in mixed-traffic environments as well as meld the line-haul efficiencies of rail with the distribution flexibility of bus. These efforts are known collectively as Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), and as with any entity in its infancy, final appearances at maturity are far from certain.

Bus Rapid Transit: An Overview

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is growing in popularity throughout the world. The reasons for this phenomenon include its passenger and developer attractiveness, its high performance and quality, and its ability to be built quickly, incrementally, and economically. BRT also provides sufficient transport capacity to meet demands in many corridors, even in the largest metropolitan regions. In the United States, the development of BRT projects has been spurred by the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) BRT initiative. These projects have been undertaken, in part, because of the imbalance between the demand for “New Starts” funds and available resources.Decisions to make BRT investments should be the result of a planning process that stresses problem solving, addressing needs, and the objective examination of a full range of potential solutions, of which BRT is only one. Good planning practice means matching potential market characteristics with available rights-of-way. BRT involves an integrated system of facilities, services, amenities, operations, and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) improvements that are designed to improve performance, attractiveness to passengers, image, and identity. Because they can be steered as well as guided, BRT vehicles can operate in a wide range of environments without forcing transfers or requiring expensive running way construction over the entire range of their operation. Through this flexibility, BRT can provide one-seat, high-quality transit performance over a geographic range beyond that of dedicated guideways. To the maximum extent practical, the system should transfer the service attributes of rail transit to BRT.Even where implementation of a comprehensive, integrated BRT system is not possible, many of its components can be adapted for use in conventional bus systems with attendant benefits in speed, reliability, and transit image/attractiveness.In summary, BRT is growing in popularity because it can be cost-effective and it works. This article describes BRT concepts and components, traces BRT’s evolution, gives its current status, and outlines some of the findings to date of the Transportation Research Board’s (TRB) Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) A-23 project, “Implementation Guidelines for Bus Rapid Transit.”

Issues on the Application of an Advanced Public Transit System to Dial-a-Ride Service

The Federal Transit Administration‘s Advanced Public Transportation System (APTS) program consists of demonstration projects that illustrate the use of new technologies in public transit. In view of the fact that similar systems are beginning to use new technology to locate and dispatch vehicles, this article reports on a study that examined issues that must be considered in implementing new systems. Specifically, the study focused on initial parameters for the computer program, defining and accessing these parameters in relation to quality of service, and measuring rider responses to guarantee performance.The implications of these issues for service quality were examined for the APTS demonstration project in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The study analyzed consumer response to the Mobility Manager, a Geographic Information System (GIS) applied to the site’s demand-responsive minibus service for the elderly and people with disabilities. Survey data from two questionnaires issued before and after the implementation of the Mobility Manager were utilized to examine travel behavior and perceived service quality. In addition, data from driver manifests issued after implementation of the Mobility Manager are used to clarify results.

A Guide to Customized Sampling Plans for National Transit Database Reporting

For estimating the system total unlinked passenger trips and passenger miles of a fixed-route bus system for the National Transit Database (NTD), the sampling plans approved by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) may either oversample or do not yield FTA’s required confidence and precision levels for the specific conditions of a transit agency. This guide helps transit agencies avoid these problems by developing sampling plans customized to their fixed-route bus services. Detailed steps are provided to calculate the statistical variation in passenger miles and unlinked passenger trips and the correlation between them. The sampling plans that transit agencies develop using this guide maintain the main features of the original FTA plans. More important, transit agencies can easily use this guide to develop customized sampling plans in an Excel environment using three existing pieces of information: an NTD sample that they have collected with their current FTA approved sampling plan; annual days of service; and daily total number of one-way bus trips.This guide complements FTA Circular C2710.1A in that transit agencies first select one of their own sampling plans that best meets their staffing needs, and then follow the procedures in the circular on sampling and collecting field data. Transit agencies should be able to use this guide and the related calculations as an approval of a qualified statistician as required by the current NTD reporting manuals.

Analyzing the Impacts of Vehicle Assist and Automation Systems on BRT

This paper summarizes research that was conducted to develop an analysis framework with which to analyze the cost effectiveness of implementing Vehicle Assist and Automation (VAA) applications, a category of Intelligent Transportation System technologies, in Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems. Seven typical BRT operating scenarios were developed based upon the Federal Transit Administration’s Characteristics of Bus Rapid Transit for Decision-Making report. The seven scenarios are representative of BRT service throughout the U.S. and are used to demonstrate which VAA applications will be cost effective within the context of real-world operating environments. The analysis examined overall benefits in terms of increased operating speed and reduced travel time compared to the cost of deploying VAA. Based upon the analysis framework, most of the operating scenarios show positive benefits over the life of the technology. The analysis also showed that deploying applications together (e.g., precision docking plus vehicle guidance) provided greater benefits since both applications use the same vehicle-based equipment. National impacts of implementing VAA applications were also analyzed based upon 75 BRT systems throughout the United States.

Developing a Method for Assessing National Demand-Response Transit Level of Service

Demand-response transit service is a major source of mobility for older adults and people with disabilities in both urban and rural areas in United States. Federal Transit Administration (FTA) grant programs under sections 5307, 5310, and 5311 all have components designed to increase the availability of paratransit or demand-response transit service. However, there is little information in the National Transit Database (NTD) or elsewhere about the extent of demand-response transit service coverage across the country. The lack of data makes it a challenge to identify gaps in service and unmet needs. The primary objective of this study was to fill the data gaps to the available NTD database to effectively determine the demand-response transit level of service. This study also developed a priority ranking procedure to identify where the greatest needs for service improvements exist in a state.

Intercity Bus Service Funding and Assessment Methodology

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA)’s 5311(f) program requires that 15 percent of 5311 program funds given to a state be used to develop and support intercity bus (ICB) service. This 15 percent can be waived if the governor certifies that the ICB needs are being met within the state. This certification became harder to justify when FTA began requiring a more stringent consultation process before certification could be given. The objectives of this study are to learn about current practices of ICB service funding mechanisms, funds prioritization, and determination processes and strategies that promote ICB service. An assessment methodology for Montana was developed to determine whether ICB needs are being adequately met and how to allocate funds to support service. The results of this study will be valuable to other states considering developing methodologies for certification and funding allocation purposes.

Public Transportation Decision-Making: A Case Analysis of the Memphis Light Rail Corridor and Route Selection with Analytic Hierarchy Process

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) New Starts process involves multiple criteria to assess funding eligibility for local public transit investments. In this article a multicriteria method–Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)—is used to assess light rail transit (LRT) corridor and route alternatives. Although the focus is on the current LRT corridor and route selection process in Memphis, Tennessee, the AHP-aided procedure is intended to facilitate the public transportation decision-making process generically, reflective of federal New Starts guidelines as well as local priorities and preferences. Each alternative corridor and route is assessed functionally with respect to site-specific ratings of the criteria and subcriteria in a unified framework. This framework contains the goal, participant groups, criteria, subcriteria, and alternatives as various elements of a public transportation decision process with relative influence on the outcome. The best corridor and route alignment alternative is identified by a composite score on the AHP ratio scale. Finally, with sensitivity analysis, it is shown how a change on the importance of the criteria or participant group priority influences the trade-offs among the criteria and the outcome. The article concludes with a retrospective, reflective discussion of the planning process as a whole.

Benchmarking Transit Research in the United States

The national transit research program in the United States commands fewer resources than research on other surface transportation modes. In real dollars, expenditures on the national transit research program declined over the past six years. While the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Equity Act of 2005 reverses this trend by increasing transit research funding over the next five fiscal years, transit research funding still lags aviation, highways, and railroads. The low priority assigned transit research at the national level is also prevalent at the state, transit industry, and university levels.In an effort to focus resources on the transit industry’s most pressing needs, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has adopted a strategic transit research plan that sets forth five goals: provide leadership, increase ridership, improve operating and capital efficiency, improve safety and emergency preparedness, and protect the environment and promote energy independence. FTA charts strategies to achieve these goals but must do so with most of its research budget earmarked to specific projects. Technology issues dominate the national transit research program.

Section 5310 Transportation State Management Plans: A Baseline Review

The Federal Transit Administration’s Elderly and Persons with Disabilities Program (§5310), in place since 1975, has been particularly important for states trying to fill gaps in accessible transportation services where existing transportation is “unavailable, insufficient, or inappropriate.” This article provides a baseline review and analysis of §5310 State Management Plans. It shows the similarities and differences in the approaches states have taken in the kinds of policies they enact, what they emphasize, and how transportation services are organized, planned, designed, and carried out to meet the special needs of elderly individuals and people with disabilities.

Federally-Mandated Evaluation of New Starts Transit Projects

Over the last 20 years, numerous metropolitan regions in the U.S. have implemented new, and upgraded existing, rail and bus rapid transit (BRT) fixed guideway systems funded by the federal “New Starts” program. Now, one condition of receipt of federal New Starts funds is that the project sponsor conduct an evaluation, called a Before and After Study, to determine the cost and ridership impacts of the transit project. Upon completion of this study, it must be submitted to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) of the U.S. Department of Transportation, which is mandated to summarize these reports and submit them as an annual New Starts Before and After Studies Report to Congress. Based on a review of the annual New Starts reports that have been conducted to date, this paper describes the key findings of these Before and After Studies and analyzes their implications for mandated program evaluation research in the transit field.

The Efficiency of Sampling Techniques for NTD Reporting

This paper examines the minimum sample size required by each of six sampling techniques for estimating annual passenger miles traveled to meet the Federal Transit Administration’s 95% confidence and 10% precision levels for the National Transit Database. It first describes these sampling techniques in non-technical terms and hypothesizes how they are expected to compare in their minimum sample sizes. It then determines the minimum sample size for 83 actual sample datasets that cover 6 modes and 65 transit agencies. Finally, it summarizes the results in minimum sample size to compare the relative efficiency of these sampling techniques. The potential for improved efficiency from using these sampling techniques is great, but the exact degree of improvement depends highly on individual agencies, modes, and services.

Through Running and Integration of Federal Railroad Administration and Federal Transit Administration Regulated Passenger Trains: A Path Toward Mixing Intercity, Commuter, Metro, and Light Rail on the Same Tracks

U.S. rail transit (subways, metros, and light rail) and Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) regulated heavy rail (commuter, intercity and regional rail) operate completely separately in revenue service. This necessitates transfers between the modes at terminals. While not unique to the U.S.A., its version of this practice is extreme and prevents the development of robust seamless rail networks. Especially in the post-Covid environment, this leaves commuter rail in search of a mission and rail transit isolated from suburbs. This paper discusses the statutory regulatory scheme that divides the two modes in the U.S.A. It will analyze the justification for the segregation and its history. Such issues include potential collisions, weight, crashworthiness, electrification, signaling, loading gauge, platform height, and operating practices. This paper concludes that the regulatory barrier preventing an FRA-regulated train from going onto a non-FRA railroad are surmountable. Running through trains between the FRA-regulated system and the rail transit network would enhance regional networks. The “Karlsruhe model” in Germany and the through running of regional trains onto the Tokyo subway network are two prime examples. Recent technological advances—such as dual mode battery multiple units, robust signaling systems such as Communications Based Train Control and Positive Train Control, and advanced car body designs able to deal with different loading gauges—make through running more practical. With little or no new right-of-way, it is possible to create far more useful rail networks. Potential shared networks at the conceptual level are discussed for Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Dallas, and Sacramento.