Strategic Station Access Planning for Commuter Rail Balancing Park-and-Ride with Other Modes

At most suburban rail stations, park-and-ride is the dominant use and the preferred access mode for most riders. Many transit agencies are trying to reduce their reliance on park-and-ride facilities and to encourage greater access by more sustainable modes. The recently released TCRP Report 153: Guidelines for Providing Access to Public Transportation Stations outlines a process to identify multimodal access priorities at high-capacity transit stations, and to weigh the benefits and trade-offs. This paper presents a case study analysis of how this station access planning process could be adapted and applied to a commuter rail network. The analysis considered the GO Transit rail system, which at the time of the study operated more than 65,000 park-and-ride spaces across 62 stations in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area of Ontario, Canada. In general, the TCRP process provided an effective approach to develop a strategic station access plan. However, several ways in which the process could be improved were identified. The paper recommends policy scenario analysis as a consultative and analytical approach to prepare a systemwide station access policy. The paper also presents a decision. making framework to assess parking needs at the individual station level and provides an example of how this framework was used to make trade-offs during the station access planning process, with balanced investment in park-and-ride and other access modes. Overall, station access planning exercises should attempt to build recommendations from the top down (i.e., station access policy) and the bottom up (i.e., decision-making framework) to ensure that proposed solutions support the overall policy direction while they respond to the individual station context.