Expanding Access via Transit Through Street Network Investments

Evaluating changes to transit service using accessibility metrics is increasingly common. However, these metrics are almost always used to evaluate changes to the transit service itself. Almost every transit user is also a pedestrian at some point when accessing or egressing from a stop. In this article, I apply an automated algorithm to identify locations in the pedestrian network where adding an additional link would improve transit accessibility. I then evaluate these locations in terms of their impact on accessibility to jobs via transit, combining both the pedestrian network and the transit service to evaluate the real-world impact of these changes. Improving accessibility via transit through street network improvements is an attractive proposition, because unlike service improvements street network improvements have minimal ongoing costs. Furthermore, many pedestrian network improvements (e.g. crosswalks or sidewalks) are relatively low cost compared to capital investment in transit service.