Mid-size Sun Belt metro: bus network redesign
Transit Agency · Pop. 780,000Context
A transit authority serving a metropolitan area of approximately 780,000 residents had not conducted a comprehensive network review since before 2020. Post-pandemic travel patterns had shifted substantially, but the agency lacked an analytical method to quantify the changes and identify which corridors were newly underserved.
The Challenge
The agency's existing planning tools relied on a regional four-step model updated every four years and manual ridership reports from AVL data. These tools could show where people were riding — but not where they wanted to ride and weren't being served. The planning director needed a demand evidence base that could survive scrutiny in a public redesign process.
The Approach
Mobvynt connected to the agency's existing GTFS and GTFS-RT feeds along with municipal bike-share GBFS data. The H3 resolution-8 demand surface was built over a 12-month rolling window. Coverage gap scoring identified hex cells with demand index above 60 and service headways above 30 minutes — a threshold the agency defined as the redesign target.
Results
- Three high-gap corridors identified with demand indices between 71 and 87
- Two route reallocations implemented within 8 months of the analysis
- Redesigned service serving an estimated 4,200 additional weekly boardings in the first quarter
- Title VI equity analysis completed as part of the same demand surface — no separate data collection required
The demand surface model gave us something we've never had before — a defensible, data-driven explanation of why we were reallocating service. That's what you need when you're going before a city council with a network redesign.