Ridership trends emerge from transit data archive
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The nation’s local transit data now sits in a centralized archive, giving officials an understanding of how communities use transportation systems.
Transit agency officials can now view passenger trend data gathered from state-level surveys and studies at the Transportation Secure Data Center (TSDC).
Under the transit passenger data section, officials can access research that shows public transit ridership and service trends provided by state agencies ranging from California’s Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority to New Jersey’s Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory announced.
Transit officials, transportation planners and researchers can leverage the data to better understand their communities’ transit system use patterns to improve service and increase its use, especially for disadvantaged communities and disabled individuals, NREL’s Transportation Modeling and Metrics Team Lead Venu Garikapati said in a statement. The data can also help guide environmental efforts such as the decarbonization of public transportation.
Aside from downloading the data, visitors can view accompanying documents including summary reports and survey instruments. Data packages also include metadata, which reveals details such as the transit agency’s five-digit National Transit Database code, the survey name and data-collection method, the travel mode and recruitment method.
Funded by the Federal Transit Administration, the recently added transit section was created in collaboration with Kansas State University “to provide a centralized archive for passenger transit data from across the nation,” NREL said. The larger TSDC launched more than a decade ago in partnership with the Department of Energy and Transportation originally focused on household travel data.
"As data-collection methods change over time, shifting from paper, phone, or GPS-based collection to more automated electronic methods, the types of data we host will continue to evolve," said NREL Transportation Researcher Joe Fish, who manages the TSDC.