MARTA worked with Foursquare ITP to quickly advance the environmental review for this BRT corridor that serves the ATL airport to 30 percent design and prioritize the critical path items necessary to progress to the point of FTA concurrence and Small Starts application. This included NEPA, the evaluation of alternatives, conceptual project design, station planning, community outreach, and the assessment of environmental impacts.
Foursquare ITP supported the evaluation of alternatives, conceptual project design, station planning, and ridership and cost modeling by creating GTFS feeds for all scenarios and developing factors for limited-stop service and bus priority treatments to quickly and accurately develop BRT operating speeds. Using Foursquare ITP’s GTFS and bus priority expertise, our Reflect tool, and Podaris software, we were able to quickly create and validate GTFS and BRT alternative speeds for modeling. We also generated operating statistics, O&M cost estimates, and fleet requirements for all scenarios.
Despite the challenges of a post-Covid drop in ridership, the Foursquare ITP project team developed a BRT alternative that is competitive for nearly $70 million in federal CIG funds.
Solutions and Outcomes
- Developed accurate GTFS feeds for all BRT scenarios using our Reflect GTFS validator and GTFS editors.
- Developed BRT speed estimates that account for stop density and priority treatments.
- Generated operating statistics, operations and maintenance cost estimates, and fleet requirements.