This project developed a new Regional Transit Plan for Central Maryland and provided a 25-year vision of mobility that defines public transportation goals for five counties and Baltimore City in Central Maryland. Foursquare ITP led the technical approach for several aspects of the plan, including the tasks that assessed service quality and service integration, and identified corridors of opportunity. One of our key contributions to this study was a visualization of passenger loads on the street network. This process included the use of OpenStreetMap data, GTFS shape segmenting, GTFS/APC reconciliation, and RMarkdown documentation. Our existing conditions work has resulted in a comprehensive profile of every agency in the region including their services, service performance, financial data, rider demographics, transfer information, interaction with other agency/modes, trend analysis, and comparison to peers. Building on this work, we performed a market analysis for the region in the summer of 2019 that identify areas of transit need, areas of transit potential, and areas that are transit supportive. We compared those areas with existing and planned transit to identify gaps by service type, geographic area, and level of service.
Solutions and Outcomes
- Identified 30 high-capacity corridors in three priority tiers based on need and demand.
- Developed recommendations for improved transit services based upon service performance, financial data, rider demographics, transfer information, interaction with other agency/modes, trend analysis.
- Produced BRT or LRT service plan with tailored headways along the long north-south corridor.
- Identified ridership estimates of the top six alignments.