A New Framework to estimate Pedestrians' Transit Demand from Discrete Mode Choice Modelling applied toward the Prioritization of Pedestrian Infrastructure Investments in Knoxville, TN

The potential social, economic and environmental benefits associated with transit oriented developments encourage investments to enhance transit service, pedestrian infrastructure and parking opportunities. Boosting transit ridership, reducing traffic and congestion, supporting mixed land uses and improving public mobility are among a long list of benefits of a well-developed transit system. Understanding the travel behaviors within the studied areas is the key to finding the best methods to be utilized to attain these benefits. Many studies have focused on locating transit service areas to forecast ridership and apply the appropriate modifications to the existing or planned systems using travel behaviors of transit riders from transit on-boards surveys. Buffer distances were then used to confine service areas of potential transit demand. The bias associated with using transit users’ demographics and the exclusion of demand beyond buffer distances motivated the search for a new method to estimate the demand for transit. Utilizing a mode choice model in estimating transit demand excludes some of the limitations found in other methods. This model was used to estimate potential walk to transit trips from each residential household for home-based work trips for Knox County using estimated probabilities of walking to transit and work trip production rates. The total walk-to -transit trips were associated with the street segments utilized to reach a transit stop. These weights of total trips were then used to prioritize pedestrian infrastructure investments at higher transit demand segments. This method can also be utilized in the prioritization of other service enhancements and stop locations.