Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016

Abstract
This project was about the transportation system in the city of Atlanta, consisting of 47.7
miles of heavy rail and 91bus transit routes. We chose this city because according to Time and
The Atlantic magazines, Atlanta is among the 10 worst cities for public transit in the US where
the percent of jobs reachable via transit in 90 minutes is 22% and the job access is 21.7%, so we
want to figure out why and propose a solution.
In order to do that, we have got information about the different system of mass transit in
the city of Atlanta. Also, we have got information about MARTA, the Metropolitan Atlanta rapid
transit authority, the principal public transport operator in Atlanta and finally we have analyzed a
new rail line system in that city.

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016

Table of Contents
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... 1
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 4
History ....................................................................................................................................................... 4
MARTA .......................................................................................................................................................... 4
Objective ....................................................................................................................................................... 5
The Four Service Lines of Atlanta.................................................................................................................. 5
What is the Problem? ................................................................................................................................... 7
New Line Analysis ......................................................................................................................................... 9
Location ..................................................................................................................................................... 9
Demand and Capacity ............................................................................................................................. 10
AADT ................................................................................................................................................... 10
%ADT and Directional Factor Throughout the Day ............................................................................. 10
Interstate Demand and Rail Line Demand .......................................................................................... 11
Line Rail Capacity ................................................................................................................................ 14
Comparison Between the Demand and the Capacity ......................................................................... 17
Service Frequency and Wait Time .......................................................................................................... 18
Service Span and Hour of Service ........................................................................................................... 18
Comfort and Passenger Load .................................................................................................................. 19
New Line Characteristics and Summary ..................................................................................................... 20
Conclusion and Other Concerns ................................................................................................................. 21
References .................................................................................................................................................. 22

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List of Figures
Figure 1: The four rail lines in Atlanta ........................................................................................................... 6
Figure 2: Congestion on the I-285 ring ......................................................................................................... 7
Figure 3: The stations of the new rail line..................................................................................................... 9

List of Tables
Table 1: Atlanta line characteristics .............................................................................................................. 5
Table 2: I-285 AADT .................................................................................................................................... 10
Table 3: MicroBENCOST %ADT and Direction% for Rural and Urban highways ......................................... 10
Table 4: Interstate Demand in veh/hour .................................................................................................... 12
Table 5: Interstate demand in pc/hour and new line demand in passengers/hour ................................... 13
Table 6: MARTA train frequencies .............................................................................................................. 14
Table 7: Transit units characteristics .......................................................................................................... 15
Table 8: Line capacities for three different TUs .......................................................................................... 16
Table 9: Comparison between line demand and line capacity ................................................................... 17
Table 10: Wait time ..................................................................................................................................... 18
Table 11: Hours of Service .......................................................................................................................... 18
Table 12: Passenger load and comfort ....................................................................................................... 19
Table 13: New line characteristics .............................................................................................................. 20

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016

Introduction
Atlanta, which is the capital of Georgia State, is considered to have one of the poorest
and unacceptable mass transit systems in the US. According to the latest census in the US, the
population raised to 5.7 million in 2016, including more than 2.5 million workers. The city is
facing a huge urban extend because of its high population in addition to the important
economical and developmental role that Atlanta plays. From here came the need to study and
analyze its public transportation system.

History
Historically, the public transit system started in the mid-1800s with the arrival of
railroads and rail line in addition to horse cars. Then, in the late 1800s, electric street cars were
initiated and later on in 1927 trolleys were introduced and they constituted the main transit mode
in Atlanta for several years; trolleys were carrying around eighty percent of the total passenger
volume in the city. Atlanta had the largest number of trolleybuses in the United State: 453
trolleybuses. For economic reasons, especially because of the high cost of maintenance of the
overhead wires and the need of substitution of the old trolleybuses which aged 16 and 17 years,
the decision to shift from trolleybuses to diesel buses was taken and within one month this shift
was applied in 1963. Highways and freeways were built starting 1950. The critical I-285, which
carries most of the congested traffic now, was achieved in 1969.

MARTA
Since 1971, the public transportation in the city is operated by MARTA which refers to
the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. MARTA started as buses operator authority
and then started to operate rail systems. Atlantas mass transit system comprises nowadays 48
miles of heavy rails distributed among 4 lines (discussed later), in addition to 92 buses lines and
paratransit mode.
As mentioned before, the city comprises around 2.5 million workers, meaning 2.5 million
commuters who are travelling an average of 66 miles each day to reach their job location. 13.7 %
of workers are using public transportation which is exclusively operated by MARTA. The
authority provides Ridership numbers:
- Total: 432,000 p/weekday
- Rail : 231,000 p/weekday
- Bus : 200,000 p/weekday

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016

Objective
The main objective of this report will be concentrated on the analysis of rail lines to study
an adequate way to construct a new line that will help in increasing the capacity, reliability,
safety, performance and frequency of rail transit mode in Atlanta and therefore reducing the
congestion in the city.

The Four Service Lines of Atlanta

As said before, the rail lines consist of 48 miles distributed over, in addition to 38
stations. Most of them consist of Rapid transit in addition to some LRT line.
The four service rail lines in Atlanta are the Red line, the Blue line, the Green line and the
Gold line.
Table 1: Atlanta line characteristics

Rail line Start Termine # stations Type of ROW Control

service
Red North Airport 19 Rapid A Automated
Spring
Gold Doraville Airport 18 Rapid A Automated
Blue Hamilton Indian Creek 15 Rapid A Automated
E. Holmes
Green bankhead Edgewood 9 Rapid A Automated

The Red and the Golden lines are linked to the airport while Blue line extend from H.E.
Holmes to Indian Creek (East West connection).
The foure lines are connected at the Five Points Station which is a metro station
localized in Atlanta Downtown. This station is considered as the principal transfer station for the
4 raill lines, providing passengers the access to local economical and cultural places like the
City Hall, the 5 points business districts and Atlanta underground.

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016

Figure 1: The four rail lines in Atlanta

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016

What is the Problem?

With a considerable increase in population and a spread urbanization, adding to them
political and racial problems that contributes to both insufficient funding and to a defect in urban
planning, the city is facing a major congestion problem.
Among the 2.5 million commuters, a major portion is obliged to travel from one end of
the city to another; this is achieved by driving on the interstate I-285. This is creating the
unacceptable congestion on this highway.

Figure 2: Congestion on the I-285 ring

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016
Adding roads is not a solution, since adding lanes and roads will attract more drivers into
the city, hence more congestion not less.
The solution should be based upon finding alternative, mainly ameliorating the public
transportation system, more precisely rail mode. The main problem with Atlanta rail system is
that the four lines are relatively far from the I-285 which is carrying most of the congestion in the
city. The present line system is giving only people localized toward the poles of the city (North-
South-East-West) the possibility of using the rail system while people living North-West, North-
East, South-East and South-West will difficultly benefit from this system since the distances are
too far to be reached every day.
This privilege was provided strictly for certain locations in the city because of an old
racial problem that developed to a political one. Based on these issues, highways and rail lines
were designed and located by MARTA which led to the exclusion of some area from the transit
system in the city.
So in order to fix the problem, and as mentioned before, we need to introduce a new rail
line that can be used as an alternative to the I-285 ring interstate. Design capacity and frequency
of service will be based on estimated passenger volume, in addition safety, civility and reliability
must be provided.

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016

New Line Analysis

Location
Since the problem that we are studying is related to the congestion on the I-285 ring, we
have decided that the best location for a new rail line has to be next to that interstate so it can be
an alternative option to be used by the people who are using the I-285 ring instead of using their
own private vehicles.
This study has already been made by MARTA and the location of this specific line is
shown below.

Figure 3: The stations of the new rail line

It will be made of Stations that already exist in addition to some additional stations that
will be constructed in the future. Also, as we can see, all the stations of this new line are next to
the I-285 ring so it can be an alternative option to be used by the people who are using this
interstate.

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016
Demand and Capacity
AADT
In order to determine the capacity of this new line, we have to determine first the average
annual daily traffic on this I-285 ring. According to the office of highway policy information in
the federal highway administration (FHWA), the I-285 ring has an AADT of 261,220 vehicles
per day and it is one of the most travelled urban highways average annual daily traffic.
Table 2: I-285 AADT

%ADT and Directional Factor Throughout the Day

In order to determine the Demand of the I-285 and the new rail line per hour, we have to
use % ADT per hour throughout the day in addition to the directional factor % and since we
havent found any data available for the Atlanta I-285 ring, we have used the MicroBENCOST
table that provides average factors in the US.
Table 3: MicroBENCOST %ADT and Direction% for Rural and Urban highways

We will use the urban section of this table and we will make an analysis for both
directions, In and Out.

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016
Interstate Demand and Rail Line Demand
To calculate the interstate demand we will use this formula:

Where DDHV is the directional hourly demand, K is the % ADT per hour and D is the
direction %.
Also, we will use the formula below to account for the peak-hour factor, heavy-vehicle
adjustment and driver population adjustment to get the demand in (pc/hour).

Assuming the traffic is uniform, PHF = 1.00.

Assuming the % of trucks and buses is 10% and the grade is small, fhv = 0.95.
Under base condition, the traffic stream is assumed to consist of regular weekday drivers
and commuters, fp =1.00.
Note that in our results we havent divided by N (number of lanes) since we want the answers in
passenger cars per hour only.
To calculate the rail line demand, we assumed that each passenger car contains only one
person and according to the American Public Transportation Association, the public transit
ridership is up to 39% when it is available.

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016
The results are shown below:
Table 4: Interstate Demand in veh/hour

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Table 5: Interstate demand in pc/hour and new line demand in passengers/hour

The hours highlighted are the hours when MARTA is serving people.

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Line Rail Capacity
The maximum offered line capacity is given by this formula:

The frequencies that will be used are the frequencies that are used by MARTA.
Table 6: MARTA train frequencies

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As for the n and the Cv parameters, we will use three different alternatives of transit units
that are shown below.
Table 7: Transit units characteristics

The 8 car automated guideway transit (AGT), n = 8 cars/TU, Cv = 70 sps/car.

The 6 car RRT, n = 6 cars/TU, Cv = 145 sps/car.
The 10 car RRT, n = 8 cars/TU, Cv = 70 sps/car.

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016
The results of the line capacities are shown below:
Table 8: Line capacities for three different TUs

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016
Comparison between the Demand and the Capacity
Table 9: Comparison between line demand and line capacity

The demands highlighted in red are the demands that the transit unit fails to serve or
when the demand is bigger than the capacity of the transit unit.
As we can see, the 8 cars AGT fails in serving many demands throughout the day for
both directions.
As for the 6 cars RRT, it succeeds in serving all the demands except for one hour (from 5
pm to 6 pm) where the capacity is less than the demand by 249 sps/hour so for this specific hour
we can add 2 cars to the transit unit and use it.
Finally, for the 10 cars RRT, it serves all the demands but it preferably not to use this
alternative since it is an over design (The capacity is much bigger than the demand).

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016
Service Frequency and Wait Time
The wait time is calculated by this formula:

And the Headway is calculated by this formula:

The results for the wait time are shown below:

Table 10: Wait time

Service Span and Hour of Service

The service span is from 5 am to 1 am.
This will provide 21 hours of service.
Table 11: Hours of Service

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016
Comfort and Passenger Load
On average, the demand is 2609 passenger/hour and the capacity for the six-car RRT is
4133, this will provide a service load of 63% seated load on average so the passengers have some
freedom in where they sit and the perceived travel time will be the actual travel time.
Table 12: Passenger load and comfort

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016

New Line Characteristics and Summary

Table 13: New line characteristics

Transit Mode Six-car RRT

Start and End Ring line along the I-285 Interstate
Type of Service Rapid
ROW A
Control Automated
n 6 cars/TU
Cv 145 sps/car
Maximum Speed 100 km/hour

From 5 to 6 pm, it is recommended to add 2 cars to the TU so it can serve the specific demand.

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 Mass Transit Systems Final Project 2016

Conclusion and Other Concerns

The major problem that Atlanta is suffering from is the congestion on I-285; the problem
is aggravating with time with the increase of urbanization and population in the city. The best
solution is to increase public transportation rather than adding roads, so we tried to design a new
rail line parallel to the interstate in order to give the commuters in the city the chance of getting
rid of the congestion. Some of the data were provided from FHWA and some other estimation
was made. In order for the new rail road to be successfully implemented, some concerns must be
dealt with like:

* The high cost of giving ROW for the new line, since lands in Atlanta are expensive

* The necessity of federal funding.

* Imposing a 1% taxes for metro users.

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References
American Public Transportation Association, Heavy Rail Transit Ridership Report,
Fourth Quarter 2007.
Chapter 4 and 5 of the TCRP Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual,
3rdedition to be released in 2013

Copeland, Larry (January 31, 2001). "Atlanta pollution going nowhere". USA TODAY.
Gannett Co. Inc. Retrieved September 28, 2007.
Hickman, Mark, Fundamentals of Transportation wikibook, Network Design &
Frequency,
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Fundamentals_of_Transportation/Network_Design_and_Fre
quency

"History of MARTA - 1970-1979". Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority.

Archived from the original on February 4, 2005. Retrieved March 2, 2008.

How can Atlantas traffic problems be solved?. Quora. Retrieved Oct 5, 2014 from
https://www.quora.com/How-can-Atlantas-Traffic-problems-be-solved.

Life-Cycle Cost Analysis in Pavement Design, Publication No. FHWASA- 98-079,

US. Department of Transportation, FHWA.

MARTA, Bus On Time Performance, retrieved from

http://www.itsmarta.com/kpichart_dd.aspx?id=bsc_Bus_OTP.

Office of Highway Policy Information. Most Travelled Urban Highways Average

Annual Daily Traffic. Data Source: 2008 Highway performance Monitoring System
(HPMS) July 27, 2010. US. Department of Transportation, FHWA.

State of California Department of Transportation, "Life-Cycle Cost Analysis Procedures

Manual for RealCost Version 2.5CA", August 2013.

Transit Cooperative Research Program. A Guidebook for Developing a Transit

Performance-Measurement System. TCRP Report 88. Transportation Research Board,
2003.

Transit Cooperative Research Program. Using Archived AVL-APC Data to Improve

Transit Performance and Management. TCRP Report 113. Transportation Research
Board, 2006.

US Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, "Life Cycle Cost

Analysis Primer", August 2002.

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Walker, J. (2011). Human transit: How clearer thinking about public transit can enrich
our communities and our lives. Island Press.

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