Spatial impacts of on-demand transit service for transit stop and neighborhood ridership

On-demand transit service is being rapidly adopted by many transit agencies due to its advantages on improved mobility. As an emerging service, its implications for ridership and neighborhood improvement of a city are crucial for long-term development. To this end, this paper proposes a framework leveraging standard city data sources to analyze and evaluate the spatial impacts of on-demand transit services for ridership in transit stops and neighborhoods. The utilization of standard data sources enables the framework to be accessible and applicable to vast cities operating on-demand services. A case study of analyses is conducted with real-world data including trips, city census and land use factors at the City of Regina, Canada. We investigated the impacts of on-demand transit accessibility and connectivity, land use and socioeconomic factors on transit stops and neighborhoods. Results indicate that the accessibility and connectivity of the on-demand transit stops positively impact the ridership. It is also found that demand for on-demand transit service is higher for neighborhoods with lower population and income. This indicates the necessity of on-demand transit services for the disadvantaged population. The proposed methods and data sources in this study can serve as a transferable framework for vast on-demand service evaluations. Moreover, the findings of this study also highlight the positive impact of on-demand transit services in shaping transit ridership and neighborhood public transportation.