About Geographic Areas for Analysis

The first step in preparing for spatial analysis is to select the geographic areas for analysis. You can select areas to analyze by creating buffers around the routes or locations or by selecting established geographic areas.

A buffer is an area of a specified distance around a point or a line. You create buffers from existing spatial elements in the Trapeze database such as routes, patterns, and stops. Buffered areas can consist of established geographic areas such as fixed routes, polygons, and specific types of locations, for example, schools, shopping centers, and hospitals. Alternatively, you can create your own geographic attributes such as points or temporary routes so that you can analyze future developments in your transit system.

You create geographic areas on the Buffers tab of the PLAN Options dialog box.