2025/01/20 by Rachel Inman, Sophie Spiliotopoulos, Xavier J. Harmony · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Engineering · #Urban Transport and Accessibility #Transportation Planning and Optimization #Transportation and Mobility Innovations
paper · doi:10.1061/jupddm.upeng-5381
openalex publication_date 2025/01/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Bus stop amenities are an important but underresearched topic. While recent work has provided some insight into bus stop amenity decisions, this paper adds to recent work by focusing on a different geography, over multiple time periods, and a more complex bus operating environment. Specifically, this study evaluates how and why bus stop amenities are distributed in Northern Virginia, an area served by seven bus operators. The paper begins the evaluation by exploring bus stop amenity policies across the region to understand how they might help explain amenity decisions. The paper then uses a mix of Google Street View data, contextual data, and statistical methods, to demonstrate that bus stop amenity distribution is correlated with factors such as adjacent land use, the location of bus stops in cities or adjacent to local roads, and demographics. While local transit policies do not directly address the complicated operating environment in Northern Virginia, in practice, bus stop amenity priorities are strongly correlated with shared transit relationships. Shared bus stops were consistently found to be a predictor for bus shelters and benches across years and modeling strategies. When bus stops are shared between agencies, bus stop amenities likely follow the most detailed guidance from the agencies. When bus stops are not shared, there is some evidence that jurisdictions may play more of a role in the distribution of amenities than agencies. Finally, this paper demonstrates how bus amenities change over time with accessibility-related amenities and seating seeing the greatest change over the last decade.