STOPS (Simplified Trips-on-Project Software)
"At their option, sponsors of New Starts and Small Starts projects may use a simplified method developed by FTA to quantify the measures used by FTA to evaluate and rate projects. STOPS is a limited implementation of the conventional “4-step” travel model. STOPS replaces the standard “trip generation” and “trip distribution” steps with the Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP) – tabulations from the 2000 Census (and soon, the American Community Survey) to describe overall travel markets. It also replaces the traditional “coded” transit network with standard transit-services data in the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format."[1]
More information:
- STOPS documentation and overview from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA)
- STOPS on the Travel Forecasting Resource wiki