Every City Should Have Something Like San Francisco's Mass Transit Access Map
Citylab
By Eric Jaffe
10 February 2015

Dan Howard (MCP '15)  developed a guide that shows transit riders just how much of the city they can reach on trains and buses in a given time window. Transit planners and scholars have made a big push toward access-based maps as more types of service data become available. The San Francisco interactive tool offers more precision than most of these other efforts because it analyzes true past performance instead of relying on scheduled performance.

Everyday trips aside, the San Francisco access map might also serve to evaluate agency spending. For instance, Howard says he plans to update the map with 2015 data and create a button that shows year-to-year changes in access. Over time, such a tool could help assess expansion projects or service improvements; it could also show projected access from future plans to help promote a proposed transit ballot or inform public funding discussions.