Commuter Rail - Garner to West Durham

[keita]

Now that I finally read the paper (thanks for the link!)… (drum roll, please)

@conclusions -but abridged

• While this study looked at the FTA measures and criteria, the project will need additional
  evaluation that can be used for FTA scoring. That will be accomplished in the next phase of
  studies. However, this study did produce results that support further analysis
• Travel times for CRT in the corridor are faster and more reliable than longer distance driving and bus routes
• The operating scenario providing service every 30 minutes in the peak periods and limited service in the off-peak periods of mid-day and evening service was the most productive among the scenarios studied
• All 16 potential candidate station zones are appropriate for further analysis
• Ridership results are consistent with similar statistics for recent commuter rail systems
• Additional analysis is needed to refine ridership estimates and to identify infrastructure required to support the CRT operating plans studied in this evaluation.

Highlights from this paper (because we all know most people aren’t going to read the whole thing):

Note for Table 10: more negative = commuter rail gets there even faster than car

@on what is(n't) defined by this study

[S]pecific station locations are not identified and are subject to future studies to determine the actual location of the station platforms. […] In future phases, alternative sites for the stations within the candidate zone (or additional candidate zones) will be identified and evaluated in terms of physical design constraints, access to local land uses, and operational analysis with the other rail services within the corridor.

@on what defines Ease of Access

[Ease of access] measures the number of intersections within a one half-mile of each CRT station candidate zone to identify the pedestrian accessibility of the area surrounding each station. The one half-mile buffer is measured using the street network, not straight-line distance to incorporate natural and built barriers into the analysis.

Note for Table 15: LBAR = legally-binding affordability-restricted area. It’s interesting to see the differences between the areas that have each ratings…

@on what it takes for a 3 out of 3 rating for Low-Income Access

Any portion of the buffer including areas with >80% poverty populations
Or
≥ half the buffer area with >50% poverty populations

@Why the study looked at ridership as a ratio

This measure was chosen to evaluate the relative performance of the scenarios and not produce a specific estimate of daily ridership. The refinement of the ridership estimates will be done in future phases of the study [but we assumed three cars per set in our results].

[…]

The term “vehicle revenue hour of service” [means] the number of commuter rail passenger car (defined as a vehicle) hours of revenue service. This is not the number of train hours as a train is comprised of multiple passenger cars or vehicles.

[…]

[Commuter train services we compared our math against] ranged from a low of 21 for the A-Train in Denton, Texas, to a high of 64 for the MetroRail in Austin, Texas.