🚍 GTA GO Train Coverage Network Analysis

📌 Objectives

• Conducted service area analysis on the GO Train railway system to assess its service coverage across the Greater Toronto Area
• Analyzed percentage transit coverage within each GTA Census Subdivision by driving time
• Support transportation planning, such as future stations, with data-driven results
• Identify transit gaps by highlighting municipalities with little coverage within the service area

🧰 Tools

• ArcGIS Pro

ℹ️ Data

• Ministry of Transportation. "GO Train stations"[csv].Scale Not Given. "Ontario Data Catalogue". April 25, 2024. https://data.ontario.ca/dataset/go-train-stations
• Statistics Canada. "2016 Census Program - Age and Sex Highlight Tables"[shp,csv].

📊 Workflow

A. 🛜 Service Area Analysis

• Import the GO Train Station point layer as facilities into the Service Area Analysis tool
• Generate Service Area polygons on 5, 10, and 20-minute driving time

B. 🔧 Configuring Census Subdivision Layer

• Run Select By Location CSDs in the CSD shapefile that intersect with the service area layer
• Join Census Data with CSD shapefiles using Spatial Join
  • Use field calculator to calculate the total area of each CSD polygon

C. 💡 Creating an overlapped feature class

• Run Intersect with the CSD layer and the service area layer to produce a new feature class of polygons containing overlapping areas
  • Calculate the total area of each polygon with field calculator
  • Calculate the sum of polygons that share the same CSDUID

D. 🧮 Computing the transit coverage% of each CSD

• Join the overlapped feature class to the original CSD shapefile using CSDUID (identifier)
• Calculate % of each CSD's area covered by the service area

🗺️ Output

✍️ Author

Jonathan Leung — University of Waterloo, Geomatics with Co-op