Transit Dashboard FAQ

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General Questions

Q: What sort of questions can I ask and answer with this dashboard?

A: That’s a tough question because there are so many questions that the dashboard can help answer. Here are a few examples organized by the tabs on the dashboard. These questions can be answered for a wide variety of areas, including political districts.

  • General Access tab
    • Where are the current Greenlink routes and stops?
    • What areas does paratransit serve?
    • Where are the areas that are within a half-mile walk of a bus stop? A fifteen-minute bike ride?
    • How many stops are in my area of interest?
    • What is the traffic volume for different modes of travel (e.g., bike, carpool, personal vehicle, public transportation, etc.)?
    • What are the demographics for my area of interest?
    • How do public transit rider demographics compare to area demographics?
    • How do two different areas of interest compare?
    • How do two different time periods compare?
  • Future Opportunities tab
    • What future routes are planned if funding is made available?
    • How are people commuting in this future service area now?
    • What’s the median commute time in that future service area now?
    • How many miles of route would this be? How many stops and where?
  • Job Access tab
    • In my area of interest, what types of jobs are people accessing?
    • How does that compare to another area of interest?
  • Access to Essential Services tab
    • In my area of interest, what percentage of the population can reach a grocery store using public transportation? A primary care doctor? A dentist? Childcare services?
    • How does this compare to another area of interest?
  • Roads or Transit? tab
    • How does an investment in road infrastructure (e.g., repaving) compare to a similar investment in public transit?
    • How many more employees could be reached with an investment in a particular future route?

Q: The dashboard has a lot of helpful data. Where did it come from?

A: We agree that it’s really important to know where the data comes from, so that we can make the most informed decisions for the Greenville community. Our team is utilizing a few key sources:

  • Replica: Replica specializes in modeling how people get around in the built environment. They use a data from a variety of sources, including cell phone locations, land use, and even spending habits to create detailed models of movement. They then “ground truth” these models by comparing them to real-world observations, like bus rider surveys or traffic counts, to make sure they’re accurate. We rely on Replica for insights into who is moving (demographics) because Greenlink only counts how many riders get on and off the bus. If you want to dive deeper into Replica’s documentation, check out their methods and validation
  • American Community Survey (ACS): The data showing demographics for a selected area are from the ACS, which is administered by the US Census Bureau. The data for smaller areas is collected over a 5-year period, for example 2019-2023.
  • Greenlink: Greenlink administers the public transit system in Greenville County and provides data about ridership counts, bus stop locations and amenities (e.g., shelters, benches), and current and potential future routes. For example, the service statistics from the general access tab are from Greenlink.

Q: Who built this site? How did it come to be?

A: Greenville Connects drove (pardon the pun) the process. Greenville Connects is a partnership of local businesses and nonprofit organizations seeking to increase investments in public transit in Greenville County. The applied research team at the Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities at Furman University wrangled all the data and built the web app. The work was supported by the Hollingsworth Foundation. Greenlink and Replica were vital partners. Greenville is at its best when we collaborate to address tough challenges, and we hope this project demonstrates the power of deep collaboration. We designed the site so that users could explore data related to public transit, as well as help to envision what an expanded public transit system could do for our rapidly growing city and county.

Q: Does this website / app work on mobile devices, iPads, etc.?

A: It does! We built the site using responsive design, which means that the app detects the screen size and adapts the presentation accordingly. On a mobile device that means that the content is arranged vertically and that icons sometimes replace longer text. On a large computer monitor, the app will take advantage of the more spacious horizontal real estate.

Q: The comparison feature is really cool. I’m comparing two neighborhoods of interest, and I want to send the comparison to someone else. On some websites, when I share the web address (URL), the person doesn’t see the same thing as I do.

A: We built the URLs or web addresses so that you can share the link with someone else. It makes the URLs kind of long, but all the information is contained in the web address so that the person that you’re sharing with sees the same thing that you did.

Q: What areas can I get data for?

A: We wanted users to be able to report for lots of different areas in Greenville County. You can get data for municipalities (Greenville, Mauldin, Travelers Rest, etc.). Some places that we think of as areas (e.g., Berea, Sans Souci, Taylors, etc.) are not municipalities but Census Designated Places. We designate those with “CDP.” According to the US Census Bureau, CDPs “are a statistical geography representing closely settled, unincorporated communities that are locally recognized and identified by name.” You can report by local political districts and even Special Emphasis Neighborhoods (SENs). SENs like West Greenville, Southernside, Nicholtown, etc. don’t align with census boundaries very well, but we pulled the data together for those local boundaries. We think this extra, hyperlocal analysis is worth it, so that the information aligns more closely with our local conception of neighborhoods. That’s a long answer, but we have geographers on the team; they like to be precise!

General Access Tab

Q: I’m looking at the number of alightings (the number of people who depart the bus) for Greenville County. It says 371,066 for the County. That number seems really high. Is that how many people are alighting every day?

A: That number is the total number of alightings for the reporting period, which is broken down into quarters. So if you selected 2025 Q2, that’s the number of people departing the bus in the second quarter of 2025 or the sum of people from April through June of 2025, rather than a single day. Replica reports data by quarter. We wanted to be consistent with that reporting period.

Job Access Tab

Q: The tree map for a given area shows the breakdown of jobs in different sectors. For example, I chose Berea as my area of interest. I see that a very large portion of jobs are in education. Does that mean that a lot people living in Berea are working jobs in education OR that a lot of people are working education jobs within Berea?

A: It means that a high proportion of people are working education jobs within Berea. Those workers could be coming from within Berea or outside of Berea.

Maps

Q: I love that there is a lot of information on the map. Is there a way for me to just show the features that I’m interested in?

A: Yes. Here’s an example. If you’re on the Access to Essential Services tab, you may only want to see childcare centers on the map. When the legend is showing (if it’s not, click the button in the lower left portion of the map), you’ll see a “Manage map layers button.” When you click that button, you can check items you want to see on the map and uncheck those that you don’t want to see. The legend will update accordingly.

Q: Can I get more information about the points or lines on the map?

A: For the majority of features on the map, you can click on a feature of interest, and you’ll get a pop-up with more information.

Q: I’m just interested in seeing where people are traveling on bikes. Can I do that?

A: Yes, you can filter by travel mode. The thickness of the blue lines on the map indicates the volume of travel on any particular travel path. By default, we show all modes of travel. But you can choose to look at a specific mode including biking, carpooling, commercial traffic, rideshare, personal vehicle, public transit, and walking. You can make that selection under the options section (Travel Method).

Q: When I click on the icon of the person walking, another layer appears. What is that showing me?

A: We call that a walkshed. That’s showing you the area that is within a half a mile of a bus stop. That means you’re within just a few minutes walk from accessing the public transportation system! The walkshed takes into account the street and sidewalk network, so it keeps in mind how people actually travel.

Q: When I click on the icon of the bicycle, another layer appears. What is that showing me?

A: We call that a bikeshed. That’s showing you the area that is within a 15-minute bike ride of a bus stop. That means you’re a short bike ride from accessing the public transportation system! The bikeshed takes into account the street and sidewalk network, so it keeps in mind how people actually travel. Keep in mind, it assumes that all streets are bikeable. In Greenville County, that’s not always the case. The bikeshed doesn’t have knowledge of bike lanes or biking safety.

Q: When I click on the icon of the bus with an access ramp, another layer appears. What is that showing me?

A: That shows the area that is eligible to use Greenlink’s paratransit service, known as GAP (Greenville Area Paratransit). Individuals who meet the guidelines under the Americans with Disabilities Act and are within .75 miles of the fixed route system are eligible. For more information about service, eligibility, and scheduling a ride visit the following website: https://www.greenvillesc.gov/601/Eligibility

Roads or Transit?

Q: Does repaving a mile of road really cost one million dollars?

A: This number is an estimate and varies based on many factors, including what sort of resurfacing or prep needs to be done. We looked at budgets for various road paving projects in SC from the SCDOT to news stories about local projects. From those sources, we estimated an average 1.2 to 1.4 million dollars. For the purposes of the project, we erred on the low side. Our cost estimates for the public transit options come from a couple of sources: 1) The 2021 Transit Development Plan Update; 2) The Greenlink Bus Stop Upgrade Program website.

Advanced Features

Q: Are there any advanced features that I should know about?

A: Yes! We built a feature for power users. Here’s an example. Say that you are looking at the General Access tab for an area of interest. There’s a lot of data there. You may want to highlight certain stats related to that area to share with someone else. If you hit the following keyboard shortcut, you’ll see more options and a description in your browser.

  • Windows: ⊞ + Shift + E
  • macOS: ⌘ + Shift + E

In our General Access tab example, say you wanted to highlight only boardings (Service Statistics section), Households without a vehicle (Commutes to Work and School section), and population by ethnicity (Rider Demographics section). After hitting the keyboard shortcut, you would click on those elements, copy the URL (web address), and send that URL to a friend or colleague. They would see just the stats you highlighted. Pretty cool, huh? You can highlight the data that’s most relevant to your conversation or question. Give it a try!