SCC-CIVIC-FA Track A: Piloting On-Demand Multimodal Transit in Atlanta

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This NSF CIVIC grant will pilot an On-Demand Multimodal Public Transit System (ODMTS) in Atlanta to improve accessibility to jobs, health care, and decent groceries. ODMTSs are a new generation of public transit systems that combine on-demand shuttles to serve the first/last miles, with high-frequency rail and/or bus routes to transport commuters on dense and congested corridors. They have the potential to improve mobility for all population segments, and are convenient, economically sustainable, and environmental friendly. The pilot will demonstrate these potential benefits in the field and, in particular, for communities that have been significantly disadvantaged in the past. It will first focus on the West Side of the city and the Belvedere Park area, two communities that are poorly served by transit and home to a low-income population. The pilot brings together a multi-disciplinary team composed of MARTA, the eighth largest transit agency in the country, the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, a transit advocacy group, and researchers at Georgia Teach.The transition from the ODMTS concept to a field pilot raises significant intellectual challenges, including (1) the accurate modeling of transit adoption; (2) the concept of reservations and its integration with real-time requests; (3) service synchronization; and (4) the accurate modeling of bus transfers and stops. In addition, the transition from the ODMTS concept to a field pilot raises significant community challenges. The service should be accessible to all population segments and bridge the digital divide that exists for multiple population segments. This requires (1) flexible payment options; (2) flexible communication methods; and (3) multi-language mobile applications. To evaluate success, the project will provide a counterfactual study comparing the performance of the existing system and the proposed pilot, based on the following metrics: (1) transit ridership, (2) wait and in-vehicle travel time, (3) accessibility, and (4) satisfaction. These metrics quantify accessibility, performance, and appeal of the ODMTS, and provide invaluable information for future transit systems. A key contribution of the grant will also be a blueprint for public transit systems across the US. In particular, the project will deliver mobility applications and high-performance servers that will be shared with the community to ease replicability and technology transfer. Moreover, it will collect invaluable information to calibrate mode choice and transit adoption models. Moreover, through the Georgia Smart Program, the pilot team include students from Morehouse college, a historically black university; they will participate in all aspects of the pilot.This project is part of the CIVIC Innovation Challenge which is a collaboration of NSF, Department of Energy Vehicle Technology Office, Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate and Federal Emergency Management Agency.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.