A GIS-Based Approach for Delineating Market Areas for Park and Ride Facilities

Park-and-ride services are an integral component of many public transit systems in the United States. A necessary step when analyzing and planning for such services is to delineate catchment areas for park-and-ride facilities. Previous approaches for delineating catchment/market areas are either problematic or have unrealistic data requirements. This paper develops a geographic information system (GIS)-based approach for delineating market areas. The detailed approach simultaneously accounts for park and ride facility accessibility and user travel direction. It is shown that the developed approach performs better than existing approaches. Further, this paper demonstrates how GIS functionality may be developed and utilized to support the analysis of park and ride services.