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 provides a detailed and formal description of these approaches, which should facilitate interpretation and implementation in a GIS environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]