B44 Select Bus Service on Nostrand Avenue: Bus Rapid Transit-Induced Mode Shift and Route Shift in Transit-Dense Brooklyn

Transportation investments have the potential to affect both mode choice and route choice for trip-making. The dense urban environment in Brooklyn, New York allows its residents to have choices both between modes and within modes, to eventually select a route. This paper tracks the changes to the transportation network and the decisions of its users that resulted from the implementation of the B44 Select Bus Service (SBS) in Brooklyn, and explores the connection between mode shift and route shift on the project corridors. The SBS implementation process involved a re-routing of the northbound bus, the removal of stops, a reconfiguring of street geometry, signal changes to intersections along the route, and the installation of bus bulbs with new bus shelters and off-board fare payment kiosks to make the bus faster and more reliable. The post-implementation data shows that the project realized its goals of making the B44 faster and gaining new ridership, while not having large detrimental effects on car travel in the area. The B44 SBS project demonstrates that a BRT project can change mode share along a corridor, whether by route shift or mode shift, to a more transit-friendly equilibrium, in a dense urban street environment.

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• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP050 Standing Committee on Bus Transit Systems.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Safran, Jeremy S
  • Beaton, Eric B
  • Thompson, Robert
  • Wan, Dan
  • Joseph, Jonathan
  • Chiarmonte, Joseph
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
• Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 16p
• Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bus stops; Bus transit; Fares; Intersections; Modal shift; Routing; Urban areas
• Geographic Terms: Brooklyn (New York, New York)
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01595112
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 16-4339
• Files: PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 31 2016 1:38PM