Each year, ITS Arizona partners with WTS to sponsor internship opportunities with local agencies and consultants. Our most recent ITS Arizona intern is Rebecca Santiago. Rebecca has a BA from UC Boulder, where she double-majored in Sociology and Physiology and is currently enrolled in a dual program at ASU (sensing a theme?), planning to graduate next spring with a Master’s in Sustainable Solutions and a Master’s in Urban and Environmental Planning. She is very active in student organizations, currently serving as the Vice President of the Student Planning Association, a professional skills development organization, and President of the Bicycle Coalition at ASU, focusing on assisting community bicycle and wellness organizations with events, educational courses and awareness campaigns.
As an intern in the Planning Accessible Transit Division at Valley Metro, Rebecca has contributed to a number of projects including economic development studies, Title VI assessments, APTA air quality assessments, investigating intelligent transportation system (ITS) technologies, and the re-write of the Urban Design Guidelines. Most prominently, however, she is leading a study focused on the integration of bicycle and pedestrian counting technologies on transit platforms.
As Rebecca explains, “The lack of bicycle data on transit systems, specifically rail, is inadequate for effective multi-modal planning. Not only is there a limited understanding of why transit riders bring their bike onboard (lack of facilities at a station, perceived safety, need it on to get to destination, etc.), but there are only snapshots of when and where people are getting on with bicycles. Furthermore, there is no information regarding how many bikes are riding the system. While several technologies exist for counting cyclists, there has yet to be an effective* application of these technologies to public transportation systems. The purpose of my work is to explore these technologies and determine which options could be compatible with the various light rail platform designs.
Additionally, Valley Metro is working to advance their RidekickTM mobile application. In addition to developing a mobile ticketing platform for the app, Valley Metro hopes to include several other features, such as real time travel information and trip planning optimization, which are currently unavailable to users. My role in the process thus far has involved researching other transit applications to understand what features are available and/or desired by users. In order to develop a high quality product, this information will set the baseline standards for what the new product should look like.
*Some transit systems have applied APC technology to the bike racks on buses. However, this technology only counts when the rack is deployed and locked in the down position. It does not count the number of bikes utilizing the rack. With racks ranging in size from 2-4 spots, the inability to count occupancy rates results in just as inadequate information as surveyed manual counts.
ITS Arizona is pleased to support Rebecca in her work with Valley Metro and wish her continued success.
