Skip to main content

Public Transport

The Public Transport Routing in GOAT is essential for performing analyses that include public transport trips.

1. Objectives​

Public transport routing facilitates intermodal analysis by integrating access and egress modes, such as walking or biking to and from the station. This is more complex than the other routing modes as it requires the merging of different datasets (such as sidewalks & bike lanes, public transport stops & schedules, etc.) and calculation approaches.

Public transport routing is used for many indicators in GOAT, such as Catchment Areas and Heatmaps.

Moreover, with Scenarios on the Street Network, a flexible routing algorithm adapts to scenario changes in accessibility analyses in GOAT.

Configurable Options for Analyses​

  • weekday: Choose from Weekday, Saturday, or Sunday.
  • start time and end time: Specify the analysis time window.

2. Data​

Transit Data​

Utilizes data in GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification) for static public transport network information (stops, routes, schedules, transfers).

Street Data​

Incorporates street-level information from OpenStreetMap to support multi-modal routing and real-world path connections (includes sidewalks, bike paths, and crosswalks).

3. Technical Details​

Public transport routing is performed using the R5 Routing Engine (Rapid Realistic Routing on Real-world and Reimagined networks). R5 is the routing engine from Conveyal, a web-based platform that allows users to create transportation scenarios and evaluate them in terms of cumulative opportunities and accessibility indicators.

Routing Options​

Modes​

bus tram rail subway ferry cable_car gondola funicular

Access and Egress Modes​

  • Access Mode: How users get to a transit stop from their starting location (walk bicycle car).
  • Egress Mode: How users proceed to their destination from a transit stop (walk bicycle).

Other (Default Configurations)​

The following default configurations are used while performing public transport routing. They are not currently user-configurable.

  • Decay function type: logistic
  • Standard deviation: 12 minutes
  • Width: 10 minutes
  • Walk speed: 1.39 km/h
  • Maximum walk time: 20 minutes
  • Bike speed: 4.166666666666667 km/h
  • Maximum bike time: 20 minutes
  • Bike traffic stress: 4
  • Maximum rides: 4
  • Zoom level: 9
  • Percentiles: 5
  • Monte Carlo draws: 200