Birmingham, AL
CLIENT: City of Birmingham
COMPLETED: 2017
Sain assisted the City of Birmingham with their major transit investment to provide a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) service between the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport, downtown Birmingham, and the west side of the city. The BRT line operates in a combination of exclusive guideway and bus only lanes.
Vision Engineering and Planning (acquired by Sain Associates in 2018) coded the BRT line in the Birmingham RPC Cube regional travel demand model and developed BRT transit ridership forecasts for the line. The BRT forecasts were developed using the regional model and STOPS to determine the future mode shares along the study corridor and ascertain the impacts of the BRT on adjacent highway volumes.
Vision developed intersection forecasts for 18 study intersections along the BRT line using the Birmingham RPC model outputs and National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 765 procedures, which were automated using Cube Voyager scripting and Excel macros/Iterative Proportional Fitting models. The intersection forecasts were used by the study team to evaluate traffic operations at the study intersections with BRT.
Sain conducted traffic analysis for the proposed implementation of BRT service for three defined corridors in the city. Sain collected traffic volume data, developed traffic simulation models, and completed capacity analysis for several project scenarios. The results of our analysis were used to test the feasibility of bus rapid transit only lanes, shared bus lanes, and necessary intersection improvements within each corridor.