Research · Transit access and measurement
DC Student Travel
Two separate views of student travel: synthetic home-school demand and school-timed bus activity measured from automatic passenger counts.
Two evidence layers
PASS generates a synthetic student population and home-school assignments from aggregate constraints. Event-APC measures changes in aggregate vehicle-door counts around school schedules. Modeled demand and observed bus activity remain separate throughout the work.
The research asks what can be learned about access and school-timed transit activity when direct observation is incomplete and student privacy remains a hard constraint.
What each source supports
- PASS supports plausible home-school demand and accessibility analysis using synthetic rows.
- Event-APC supports school-timed changes in aggregate boardings and alightings.
- GTFS routing describes network opportunity under a stated service model.
- AFC supplies full-day aggregate context; it is not an APC denominator or passenger linkage.
Current evidence
The Event-APC work is listed in the TransitData 2026 program. The current study covers 237 schools and 75 instructional weekdays in fall 2025.
Two attribution rules estimate 13,909–15,267 excess post-dismissal boardings and 13,520–14,866 excess pre-arrival alightings per weekday relative to matched non-school weekdays.
Evidence limits
PASS rows are synthetic. Event-APC estimates school-timed changes in aggregate bus counts. Neither source identifies students, their modes, or complete trips. Accessibility results describe modeled opportunity under the network assumptions used.