Site Suitability: Increasing Public Transportation Access

Description: My project is a site suitability map. That focuses on accessibility to health facilities and School sites in the city of La Mesa. I resided in La Mesa, CA for about 2 years. I had some access issues to transportation due to a lack of sidewalks. I was not able to get a feature file of the streets that do not have sidewalks. I shifted my project to analyze access to healthcare facilities and school sites in La Mesa via public transportation.  In this suitability model, I determined a location for a Transit Stop that would make access to these sites easier.  

Research Question:  Where should the City of La Mesa put another transit stop to make health facilities and school sites more accessible? 

Methods:  To find the best location for another Transit stop I created a suitability model that weighs in six factors: Hospitals, Healthcare, Facilities, Transit Route, Schools, Colleges, Transit Stop. I put more weight on Hospitals and Healthcare facilities. I weighed distance to Transit Stops and Transit Routes as third most important factors. We want a stop that is furthest to already established transit stops but also want a Transit Stop that is near a Transit Route because it is unlikely that a whole new route will be implemented. I then weighed Colleges as second most important and High Schools as least important. I decided to weigh colleges as more than high schools because it is more likely for a college student to take the bus. Parents may be less likely to have their underage child take transit if they had the ability to choose.