2009 Outstanding Master’s Thesis – Rachel Carpenter
Carpenter’s study analyzed the impact of the Fix I-5 project closures on peak period bus transit ridership of five transit agencies serving the downtown Sacramento core.
The results indicated that gasoline prices and unemployment rates were statistically significant predictors of transit ridership, with increased gasoline prices and unemployment related to increased bus transit ridership. All agencies had overall increases in mean ridership during the study period, but there were also seasonal variations in mean ridership. Removal of trend and seasonal components in the bus transit ridership data sets was accomplished using multiple regression and sinusoidal decomposition. Time series intervention analysis then estimated that the Fix I-5 project had little impact on mean number of bus riders for all five transit agencies. Bus transit agencies with main service areas closest to the Fix I-5 project were most affected, with ridership increases of about three percent or less attributable to Fix I-5. This study did not analyze the impact of Fix I-5 on other modes of transportation, which may have been more affected than bus transit ridership.
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