VIA Metropolitan Transit Authority

VIA Metropolitan Transit, a public transit agency in San Antonio, Texas, has been working with TMD since 2013 to redesign and optimize its bus network. In 2023, TMD’s most recent work focused on VIA’s proposed expansion to its microtransit program. TMD was tasked with developing ridership estimates and operating costs for eight possible new microtransit zones. To do this, TMD created two models. The first model used population and jobs data, calibrated against the performance of existing zones, to project ridership. The second model used anonymized cellphone and telematics data, calibrated against the performance of existing zones, to estimate ridership based on the total number of trips that occur in the proposed zone. The results were also compared against Remix’s microtransit tool’s ridership estimates. TMD then developed financial projections for each proposed zone under both models, estimating costs based on VIA’s existing price structure for the operating microtransit zones. For the trip-based model, TMD also produced an estimate of the number of vehicles that would be required to operate the service by the hour of the day.