Design team members: Kevin Bragg & Shajee Kathirgamanathan
Supervisor: Dr. Jeff Casello
Background
The Region of Waterloo is aggressively pursuing improvements in the quality of local transit service. The completion of the Regional Growth Management Strategy in 2003 identified a Central Transit Corridor (CTC) as an excellent location for rapid transit. The CTC connects Downtown Kitchener, Uptown Waterloo, Downtown Cambridge and major activity centres in between. The provincial Places to Grow legislation further encouraged the region's strategies identifying Uptown Waterloo, Downtown Kitchener and Downtown Cambridge as urban growth centres and candidates for higher-order transit.
In the summer of 2005 an Environmental Assessment (EA) was initiated to select preferred technology and alignment for rapid transit in the CTC. The first and second phases of the EA have been completed; first approving a dedicated right-of-way and second selecting a short list of technologies, Light Rail Transit (LRT) or Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), and a short-list of possible routes. The process is expected to be completed during the Summer of 2008, with detailed design and construction to follow. The deployment of a RT line provides an opportunity to expand existing bus service. A bus network could be designed to compliment the RT and improve service across the urban region. Even areas far from the CTC could benefit from the RT service if they are well connected by local bus service.
Project description
The goal of this design project is to provide proactive rather than reactive service changes. The application of systems analysis and mathematical programming methods can shed a great deal of light on the form of an optimal transit network. The problem statement for this design project is:
Design a ubiquitous network of bus routes to complement the construction of a Rapid Transit route in the Central Transit Corridor of the Region of Waterloo.
In "Urban Transit: Operations, Planning and Economics", Vuchic (2005) defines ubiquitous as providing:
- Service in all heavily traveled corridors and provision of direct connections among major origin-destination pairs
- At least one station [or stop] close to each major activity area or centre
- Adequate coverage throughout the central area and close suburbs
- Different sections of each line reasonably well balanced by passenger volumes
- Good connectivity among lines, requiring not more than one transfer for all major travel directions
- Convenient transfers between lines as well as to and from other modes
- Reasonable and good connections for non-Central Bussiness District oriented trips
Design methodology
The project utilizes an algorithm referred to as TRAnsit NEtwork Designer, or TRANED, devised by Dr. Young-Jae Lee, Assistant Professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, originally as part of a PhD thesis under the supervision of Dr. Vukan Vuchic at the University of Pennsylvania. The algorithm starts with a maximum number of low-frequency routes that provide direct travel with no transfers or walking time between every origin and destination. The routes compete against other nearby routes for passengers, and the bus routes that have the highest frequency typically gather more passengers, increasing the route's frequency and gathering yet more passengers, until alternative routes are eliminated entirely or some sort of equilibrium is reached. This results in fewer high frequency routes, and a transit network with an overall lower travel time. The cumulative effect of the algorithm is to provide direct service between high volume O-D pairs, and to concentrate the demand from the lower volume pairs onto the high demand corridors.
The algorithm will be used to generate a set of different networks under different assumptions of network form. For example, the network could be designed to emphasize connections with the Rapid Transit (RT) route in the CTC, providing everyone access to the RT and destinations along it, but likely providing poorer service between origins and destination not near the CTC. Alternatively, many more direct connections between origins and destinations in the entire region could be provided, providing service to more areas, but likely providing poorer quality service near the CTC. Deciding which alternative (among several others) best serves the Region of Waterloo and its residents requires a quantification of the potential trade-offs, and a prioritising of values.