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Exploring and modeling the level of service of urban public transit: the case of the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, Canada

Abstract This study assesses the availability of public transit (i.e. supply) in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), Canada. We examine transit service intensity at the census tract level by assembling and analyzing a suitable GIS database for the study area. We make use of a version of the ‘Local Index of Transit Availability’ (LITA) to measure and explore service levels based on the coverage, capacity, and frequency of the transit system. Generated LITA measures are regressed against a number of locational covariates to establish a statistical relationship between the level of transit service and the characteristics of the site transit is servicing. We utilize a simultaneous auto-regressive (SAR) model to account for spatial effects and correct for the estimation bias that usually arises from the conventional Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) modeling approach. Results from exploring LITA indicate that the core areas of municipalities were not necessarily well serviced by public transit. Suburban peripheral tracts and those adjacent to the shoreline were characterized by average transit service at best, and areas adjacent to municipal borders indicated discontinuity in transit service. Furthermore, the multivariate analyses suggest that population density and income, as well as the presence of certain socio-economic groups in a tract (e.g. recent immigrants, young adults and elderly) can serve as key locational variables when examining transit availability.