Austin Transit Ridership Prediction

In recent years, the efforts to revitalize and improve public transit systems have emerged in many U.S. cities. Buses gained more attention from planners due to the flexibility and lower infrastructure cost. The City of Austin has carried out Cap Remap, the biggest bus system overhaul in the region’s history, in June 2018 that successfully enhanced the bus service and increased the ridership in the Greater Austin Area. Yet, given the rapid growth and development in Austin and innovations, such as micromobility and autonomous vehicles, in transportation planning, the current workflow of redesigning a bus system lacks flexibility and efficiency. Most of the analytical work and modeling on ridership was outsourced to consulting firms, which means for in-house planners, it would be hard to test out different planning scenarios on the fly. And those models don’t generate easily understandable visualizations, which provide a barrier to communicating information to the general public. These much-needed updates inspired us to create an application that helps planners have a better understanding of ridership change through different scenarios and streamline future bus system design processes.

Learn more about the project. 
View the app.