On October 2, 2021, Sound Transit of the Puget Sound, Washington, began Link light rail service to three new stations on the 1 Line. These stations serve the University District, Roosevelt, and Northgate areas in Seattle. This project examined the changes in regional travel behavior that occurred as a result of those changes in transit service.

A large portion of all transit rides in the greater Puget Sound region are paid for with the One Regional Card for All (ORCA) electric transit fare card. TRAC researchers have developed a business intelligence system that takes advantage of data from the ORCA system to allow transit agencies to analyze farecard transactions and better understand transit travel.

This project analyzed changes in the rates of active school transport captured in the 2016 and 2019 Washington State Student Travel Surveys and also evaluated the likely impacts of Safe Routes to School projects on rates of active school transport. It was part of a long-term collaboration between the University of Washington and the Washington State Department of Transportation to model the environmental determinants of active school transport (AST) in order to help support and promote AST and to ensure the safety of students traveling to school.

Many agencies and companies are interested in developing technologies that will remove barriers to mobility and transportation for individuals with disabilities, but how can the success of such technologies be accurately evaluated? This project created a framework that the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Accessible Transportation Technologies Research Initiative (ATTRI) can use to develop evaluations of new technologies intended to improve mobility for people of all abilities.

The increasing availability of shared mobility options is affecting travel behavior and travel demand. Smartphone-based technology has permitted the rapid spread of shared mobility options, which has affected how people use traditional travel modes. Although transportation policies need to consider these changes, a lack of data impedes the development of programs and policies that could address both the positive and negative aspects of the new travel options. This project aimed to provide much needed information about how app-based shared mobility options affect the demand for traditional private individual and public transit travel.

The Via to Transit service in the Puget Sound region was a pilot implementation of an on-demand transit access service that connected riders going to or from five Sound Transit Link light rail stations with their trip origins/destinations. This project demonstrated the viability of a public agency partnership with a private sector transportation network company and evaluated the results of providing the pilot Via to Transit on-demand, first-mile/last-mile access to transit services.

Bike share, e-bike share, and e-scooter systems (collectively known as shared micro-mobility) are gaining popularity throughout the United States and internationally, but no one has yet determined the optimal system design. This study investigated motivators for and deterrents to the use of such systems in the Pacific Northwest.

Walking and biking to school help children be healthy. They also reduce air pollution, local noise, and traffic congestion. Poor walkability environments pose barriers for children to walk to school. This project developed two school walkability scores that can help parents and school staff assess walkability levels around individual schools and that can also guide jurisdictions in selecting strategies that will increase walkability and safety around schools.

Puget Sound transit agencies want to ensure the safety and security of transit riders. Transit operators have long monitored crime and are aware of high incident locations. However, they lack data-driven tools to readily match crime events with the locations of individual transit facilities and with transit service periods. This pilot project explored the use of data-driven tools to identify concentrations of criminal activity near transit facilities and illustrated how novel sets of disaggregated data on both crime and transit ridership can serve the development of models to assess the safety of transit riders at specific locations.