Roll out the Red Carpet: Prioritization Analysis for Dedicated Bus Infrastructure in Greater Boston

Background

Greater Boston is experiencing historic levels of congestion — causing delays, lost productivity, and excess greenhouse gas emissions as frustrated commuters sit in traffic. The MBTA’s Better Bus Project has partnered with Cartographer: Tess Ruderman municipalities to reclaim road space for public buses in an MA Candidate 2020 effort to improve commute times and reliability of bus UEP 235 Advanced GIS | Fall 2019 transit. Faster, more reliable service is key to shifting car commuters to public transit, which alleviates congestion and its associated ills. This effort is motivated in part by Factor Maps goals set out in Go Boston 2030 to boost transit commuting by 33% and decrease commuting by driving alone by 50% by 2030. The success of recent dedicated bus lanes has bolstered support for more transit priority infrastructure across the region. Research question: Which MBTA bus routes should be prioritized for implementation of additional miles of dedicated lanes? Methodology Criteria Weight Level of ridership, within those that carry over 4,000 daily 5 passengers Percent of rush hour stops that arrived on time 5 Average population density within 1/4 mile 3 Average employment density within 1/4 mile 3 Rush Hour Population Employment Land Use 3 Prioritization Weekday Land use diversity within 1/4 mile, calculated using an Route On Time Density* Density* Diversity Rank Ridership index of employment types from the EPA Percentage (people/acre) (jobs/acre) Index Figure 1. Criteria and weights used to establish priority rankings for dedicated bus infrastructure. 1 1 11,925 74% 47 50 2,791 Bus routes carrying at least 2 SL5 10,267 78% 45 92 2,796 4,000 daily passengers are the best candidates for 3 39 11,611 77% 42 52 2,718 driving in dedicated lanes 4 93 4,662 65% 31 127 2,843 (Vest et al 2018). The 5 66 12,236 74% 32 26 2,795 MBTA bus system has 30 6 SL4 5,799 76% 43 94 2,894 such routes. 7 28 12,880 74% 33 14 2,468 The model below in Figure 8 47 4,807 64% 35 37 2,783 4 shows how ArcMap was Figure 2. Average weekday ridership by MBTA bus route during FY2018. 9 16 5,539 49% 21 6 2,621 used to calculate the different factors of the prioritization equation. 10 70 4,813 50% 15 12 2,775 For each bus route, a ¼ mile buffer (equivalent to a 5 minute walk) Figure 3. Top ten MBTA bus route identified as candidates for dedicated lanes. was intersected with the underlying geography of population, employment, and land use diversity at the census block group level. Future Research This resulted in a weighted average for each characteristic along each bus route. Future research will refine these methods using bus frequency data and combine ridership at the corridor level in order to capture the Results & Discussion full utility provided by high bus volume road segments. It will also designate a 5 minute walk buffer by network analysis rather than The analysis identified ten high-priority bus routes including two on Euclidean distance. Further research could incorporate streetscape the Silver Line (Figure 3). These routes represent over 84,000 elements such as width, number of lanes, and presence of parking daily unlinked trips with the potential to be made more and bike lanes to determine specific intersections and road segments reliable. The weighting scheme ranked Routes 28, 23, and 111 where a dedicated lane could have an outsize influence in helping a (high ridership routes which serve Chelsea, Dorchester, Mattapan, bus navigate through car traffic. and Roxbury) surprisingly low. This is attributed to low surrounding employment density. Figure 4. Iterative model built in ArcMap 10.7.1.

Data Sources: American Community Survey 2017 5-year estimates | Census Bureau | EPA Smart Location Database | MBTA Performance Dashboard | MassGIS Projection: Lambert Conformal Conic. Massachusetts State Plane 2001. References: Better Bus Project. 2019. “Bus Transit Priority.” MBTA.Com. 2019. https://www.mbta.com/projects/bus-transit-priority. Boston Transportation Department. 2017. “Go Boston 2030: Imagining Our Transportation Future.” Boston, MA: City of Boston. Vest, Adam, Patrick J. McMahon, and Jesus Cuellar. 2018. “Developing Dedicated Bus Lane Screening Criteria in Baltimore, Maryland.” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board 2672 (8): 52–63. Image Credit: Amy Custis Photography