QUANTIFYING THE EFFECTS OF UPASS: A TRANSIT DEMAND MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

Transportation networks remain fixed, in terms of capacity, for long duration of times due to various reasons such as budgeting constraints, availability of land for more lanes. Whereas automobile growth rate increases each year putting more burden on our road networks. Transportation planners have used different strategies to reduce traffic load on road networks such as encouraging the use of public transportation services, carpooling/ sharing, subsidized bus passes. One such measure is Universal bus Pass (UPass) which has been proven to be an effective solution for transit demand management. While focusing on educational institutes across North America, this research quantitatively analyzes the effects of UPass on transit ridership for the first time. In general, an increase of 50% has been observed in transit ridership due to UPass implementation and all the cities where UPass was implemented experienced a positive change in transit ridership trends. The developed models are demonstrated through a case study.