The Puget Sound Regional Council has been developing new tools to improve the analysis and forecasting capabilities for use in the Transportation 2040 plan update process. These new tools are part of an overall integrated modeling framework.

Transit Competitiveness Index

The Transit Competitiveness Index helps to understand transit markets by estimating the competitive conditions for a group of TAZ (Transportation Analysis Zone) origins paired to a group of TAZ destinations for transit that is independent of transit service currently existing between the orgin-destination pair. The TCI is a composite metric providing a single score of dozens of specific market conditions that are weighted in proportion to their relative effect on mode choice for each market segment. The market conditions include trip purpose, drive egress time, parking costs at the destination, congestion, urban form factors, socioeconomic characteristics, market segment concentration, and trip intensity.

Service Planning Tool

The Service Planning Tool helps to understand transit customers by using market segment data by census block group to determine the mode choice behavior for each market segment identified by attitudinal data collected from the PSRC 2006 Household study. Eight market segments were identified based on three key traveler attitudes (transit receptiveness, travel flexibility, and comfort and time use). The SPT contains a series of calculations that predicts changes in ridership (bus or rail) that will result from changes in level of service characteristics for a set of production-attraction zones.

Applications of the tools

These tools have been used to identify new transit service and increases in existing service for the Transportation 2040 update, the BNSF Eastside Corridor Feasibility Study, and will be used in the Bellevue Multimodal Concurrency Study. The tools can be used to support transit planning activities such as evaluating under- or over-served markets, (TCI), testing alternative service plans for short term planning (SPT), and maximize ridership for transit projects (SPT).