A Framework for Assessing Feasibility of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Project Sites

1648188PDFTech ReportMPC 17-330Decision support systemsFeasibility analysisImplementationLocationRural transitTransit operating agenciesTransit oriented developmentUrban transitAnalytic hierarchy processUnited StatesColoradoDenver (Colorado)Mountain Plains ConsortiumSharma, AviStrong, Kelly C.Ozbek, Mehmet E.Colorado State University. Dept. of Construction ManagementColorado State University. Dept. of Civil and Environmental EngineeringMountain Plains ConsortiumUniversity Transportation Centers Program (U.S.)US Transportation CollectionAfter the Second World War, the United States saw a decline in ridership on transit systems, which eventually resulted in the dismantling and abandonment of many rail systems. The primary mode of public transportation shifted from transit to buses. It used the same streets and competed with the same infrastructure capacity as automobiles. For this reason, bus systems also started to fail when people realized that if they have to wait for the traffic, they might as well wait in their own automobile that provided higher flexibility of timing and route (Ditmar, Belzer and Autler, 2004). This shift resulted in even more highway congestion, especially along commuter routes. To counter the problem of congestion resulting from modern urbanization, urban planners developed the idea of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). TOD (or similar concepts like transit village, transit-friendly design, and transit-supportive development) is a development designed to encourage the use of public transit and creation of pedestrian-friendly environments (Cervero, Ferrell, & Murphy, 2002). This research attempts to answer the following fundamental questions: What factors does a transit agency use to choose among alternative TOD locations in a transit network, and what is the relative importance of each factor? It aims to develop a decision support framework that can be used by different transit agencies when choosing a TOD site by incorporating their unique factors and weights using a multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) tool called Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). This paper presents two implementation examples of the developed framework, one for the Regional Transportation District (RTD) of Denver, Colorado, metro area, and another application for the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority (RFTA), in the Aspen, Colorado, region. The applications demonstrated feasibility of the AHP decision support framework for both a large, urban transit district and a smaller, more rural transit agency, with similar process, but differing factors and relative importance weights