Patent ID: 8571918

Claim:
A method of estimating a transit demand graph, the method comprising: collecting non-rider conditional information that includes at least one non-rider condition that when satisfied converts at least one non-rider into a rider, wherein non-riders do not use a public transit route; generating, by a processor, a non-rider transit demand graph by satisfying one of the non-rider conditions, wherein the non-rider transit demand graph shows the demand of the non-riders for the public transit route; collecting rider conditional information that includes at least one rider condition that when satisfied converts at least one rider into a non-rider, wherein riders use the public transit route, wherein collecting the rider conditional information comprises parsing survey results for feedback on changes proposed by a survey that would encourage a rider to become a non-rider and deriving the rider conditions from the feedback; generating, by a processor, a rider transit demand graph by satisfying one of the rider conditions, wherein the rider transit demand graph shows the demand of the riders for the public transit route; and generating a normalized transit demand graph from the non-rider transit demand graph and a rider transit demand graph.