Intermodal screening
One method, two modes: bus and ferry on the same list
Urban Pathways screens ferry corridors alongside bus, BRT and trackless-tram corridors, using the same five-factor method and the same confidence-tier posture. For a city with a waterway, that means one screening run can rank bus and ferry candidates together, calibrated across markets rather than rebuilt for each one — so a lesson learned calibrating one mode strengthens the method on the other.
Every city with a formal bus network is a candidate for Urban Pathways screening — a considerably larger set than the subset of cities with a navigable waterway suited to ferry screening [Source: UN Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects, 2018 revision].
Why intermodal matters
For a city with both a road network and a waterway, running one screening across bus, BRT, trackless-tram and ferry corridors together answers a sharper question than screening each mode separately: is the best answer here a ferry, a surface-transit corridor, or both? Doing that on one comparable, five-factor basis is what makes the joint view useful, and it is why we recommend cities with a waterway include ferry corridors in the same screening run from the outset.
One method, one honesty posture
Ferry and surface-transit screening carry the same restraint: a screening and prioritisation tool, not a demand forecast, with every result labelled by confidence tier. That posture holds regardless of mode.
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