|
Items in cart [4] |
Questions? Call 888-624-8373 |
| Copyright © 2009. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Terms of Use and Privacy Statement |
Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 249
CITY OF FREMONT'S TRAVEL TRAINING PROJECT
CASE STUDY
OCR for page 250
OCR for page 251
CITY OF FREMONT'S TRAVEL TRAINING PROJECT
Fremont, a city of 190,000 located in the suburban southern portion of AC
Transit's service area, has developed a promising program to increase the personal
mobility of the elderly and people with disabilities. Its Travel Training Project
was conducted from July, 1993 through June, 1996 with funds from AC Transit
District, the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART), and Union City Transit in
the cities of Fremont, Newark, Union City, Hayward and San Leandro. Goals
were to expand travel options and create long term behavioral change by training
this population to ride fixed-route, public transit.
One impetus of the program was to reduce the costs and demands on the
paratransit systems resulting from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Under ADA, transit agencies cannot limit the number of paratransit trips provided
to ADA-eligible persons. Training those who are able to take the bus and BART
saves the agencies the cost of providing the more expensive paratransit trip. In turn,
more space is available for those who are unable to ride public transit.
Traveling by bus and BART also saves the user money. Riders pay from $2-
$6 per trip on paratransit, depending on distance, but only 60 cents per trip under
AC Transit's elderly and disabled fare. In addition, using public transit gives the
rider greatly increased flexibility to take trips when desired, instead of having to
schedule trips in advance on paratransit.
PHILOSOPHY BEHIND PROJECT DESIGN
Beyond the transportation element of the program, the travel training
project had a goal to encourage empowerment and independent living among
participants. Therefore, central to the philosophy of the program's design was
that training should occur in groups with peers as travel training assistants.
Many empowerment models are based on the psychology of group learning.
The group design allows for a synergy among participants, where one student,
who may be shy or lacking in confidence, can learn from others just by watching.
In the travel training classes, students can also put their own physical abilities
into perspective by comparing their situation with the frailties and disabilities of
ether learners. Bv contrast. in one-on-one training models, one person is the
authority and the other person is the learner. This model can put pressure on an
anxious learner to perfo~-~. According to the program's designers, the one-on-one
model also does nothing to address the need for friendships and socialization
among seniors and people with disabilities, who often have been isolated in their
homes.
~ - _ ~ ~,~ 7
Finding peers to act as travel training assistants was also a key component
of the program's design. Six assistants were hired as temporary, part-time
employees of the City of Fremont's Human Services Department.
1
They were
OCR for page 252
senior citizens and persons with disabilities who used public transportation and
could serve to mode! successful travel behavior. As role models, the assistants
could reduce the stigma associated with being disabled. Within the group setting,
they were paired with an individual to assist with reading, writing, and walking
safely. The assistants were instructed not to "help" students by performing the
tasks for them, but simply to aid the students with any difficulties. Assistants
were chosen for their experience in working with this population. They were
given an eight-hour training session and participated in stay meetings reviewing
policy and program issues.
The travel assistants were supervised by a city management employee. The
program administrator was a contractor to the City of Fremont who hired two
teachers. The teachers themselves had disabilities and, thus, could speak
knowledgeably about overcoming their fears and becoming public transportation
users.
CURRICULUM
The Travel Training program consisted of six classes, each three hours long.
At first, the classes were held once a week. Because participants missed classes
due to illness, a second format was added in later phases. In this format, two
classes a week were offered for three weeks, promoting increased retention.
Participants were transported to and from the classes by paratransit, which was
also an opportunity for them to become familiar with each other.
The first meeting was in a classroom setting, usually at a senior center or
agency site where people with disabilities were served. As an icebreaker,
participants played Travel Bingo, allowing staff to assess the mobility and social
interaction of students. Discussions were held on travel motivation,
responsibilities of transit agencies and riders, and safety.
In the second class, AC Transit or Union City Transit provided an out-of-
service bus and a public outreach stay member. Participants practiced getting on
and oh the lifts and kneeling buses and in and out of the bus seat. They
determined whether they were more comfortable sitting sideways or facing
forward. They also found where they lived on an enlarged bus map, what buses
served them, and how to read the schedule. The group then planned a collective
trip.
The third and fourth classes consisted of bus trips. On the second bus trip,
participants also practiced making a transfer.
The last two trips were on BART, where participants practiced purchasing
tickets, using the elevator, riding the train, and locating bathrooms, telephones,
the station agent's booth, and system maps. The last trip was also graduation.
Participants got their pictures taken for the Regional Transit Discount Card and
received certificates of completion and a free senior and disabled BART card, AC
Transit pass, and Union City Transit pass.
2
OCR for page 253
Six Phases, totaling thirty sessions, were held with an average of 10-15 in a
group. Altogether about 300 people were trained. A "typical" participant was a
woman, approximately 70 years old, who was ADA eligible with vision, heart,
spinal or arthritis problems. Two classes were taught in Spanish and another in
Farsi by native speakers, with class handouts translated into these languages.
DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED
A major impediment was the need for additional liability insurance to cover
participants who might be injurer! on the transit trips. No public agency involved
was willing to add this coverage. The problem was resolved when the program
administrator who had contracted with the City of Fremont to design and oversee
the project agreed to add the coverage to her business insurance and bill the
program for the cost. There was never a need to invoke the coverage.
The City of Fremont staff wanted to offer Travel Training as a preventative
program to seniors not yet certiOed as ADA eligible. The goal would be to train
people before they become incapacitated enough to qualify for ADA assistance,
thereby preventing a dependency on paratransit. Two of the transit operators who
funded the program, however, wanted to limit funding only to participants who
qualified under ADA.
Those who did enroll in the Travel Training were promised that they would
not lose their eligibility for paratransit. There would be a strong disincentive to
enroll in the program if participants would be ineligible, by definition, for
paratransit after learning to take fixed-route transit.
Staff designing the Travel Training Project also rejected the idea that
training be restricted to those found ineligible for paratransit. Disgruntled
participants could be a liability risk if they tried to prove they could only use
paratransit.
During the period of the Travel Training Project, AC Transit and BART
formed a paratransit consortium. The consortium was formed to meet ADA
requirements to provide paratransit services comparable to their services for the
general public. Whereas paratransit had been offered by the various cities within
the transit operators' service areas, it now became a responsibility of the transit
operators themselves. The successful bidder for the consorti~'m's contract also
included a one-on-one travel training component. Because AC Transit and BART
were, thus, paying for travel training through this new contract, they terminated
their funding for the City of Fremont's Travel Training Project in June, 1994.
Fremont, Union City, and Newark continued to fund Travel Training with
the cities' allocation of a countywide transportation sales tax until June, 1 996,
when a loss of other funds forced them to discontinue the project. They intend to
reinstate a smaller version of the Travel Training Project for their own residents
in Summer, 1997 from the sales tax allocation. There is a long waiting list for
Travel Training, which will be offered to non-ADA eligible participants as well.
3
OCR for page 254
EVALUATION
Classes were free to all participants. In exchange, participants agreed to
keep a diary of their trips following the conclusion of the class. They were then
called 30, 90 and iS0 days after the classes to determine whether the classes had
resulted in increased mobility and expansion of travel options. At the end of the
first year, Fiscal Year 1993-94, these followup phone calls showed that 4,008 one-
way trips on public transit had been taken by the 106 participants in Phases ~ and
Il. These results demonstrate that the goal of long-term travel behavioral change
had been achieved.
To measure whether travel training resulted in a reduced demand for
paratransit services, paratransit users who had been travel trained were matched
with a control group of paratransit users who had not received travel training.
The two groups were matched according to gender, age, disability and frequency of
Daratransit use for a two-month Deriod and a one-vear period. Data showed that
, ~ ,, , _ .
~ ~ ~ · ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
tne untrained users took an average or 1ou/o more paratranslt trips than those Who
were trained. However, because the sample size was small, "no statistical
significance can be attached to the reduction in the number of trips by the trained
group when applying standard statistical tests." Nonetheless, the evaluation
concluded that "it is important to note that the reduction of paratransit trips for
participants is consistent with increase of fixed-route trips for the same group, and
therefore, it would suggest that trained participants are shifting at least some
trips from paratransit to fixed-route travel.)
In order to add a qualitative dimension to these evaluation results, one
participant and two peer travel assistants were interviewed as part of this TCRP
research. The three emphatically agreed that travel training bolstered the
confidence and self-esteem of participants and reduced their fear of travel by
public transit.
One participant interviewed was a man in a wheelchair who fo~-~erly used
only paratransit and now takes an AC Transit bus to college. Whereas he used to
spend $32 per month on paratransit, his travel to school now only costs him $~l
per month for a disabled bus pass. He has increased the frequency of his other
travel, going shopping after class and attending events, such as the county fair.
He says he "no longer feels like a burden" having to ask others for rides.
The others interviewed were a woman who taught twelve elderly Afghan
women in their own language and a senior citizen who trained others to take the
bus to the senior center where she worked. The senior citizen reported that her
students, who could only go to the center if they could find a ride, now attend
frequently for meals and to meet new friends. The Afghan women, who also do
not drive, no longer suffer stress and depression from their isolation, according to
the peer assistant. They visit other Afghan friends in the community and their
children in other cities; no longer need to bring along family members to doctor's
appointments, because they can ride the bus to the Afghan doctor; and go
shopping at the mall. The women display their graduation certificates proudly on
4
OCR for page 255
their walls, and their children have called to express grateful appreciation for the
Travel Training Project.
MEASURING TEIE: COST AND BENEFITS OF TEIE: TRAVEL TRAINING
PROJECT
AC Transit, BART, and Union City Transit funded the project from 1993-96.
The budget for Phases ~ and IT was $120,000 for Fiscal Year 1993-94. This
includes $60,000 for project coordination, program administration, outreach,
overhead, evaluation and training the trainers. Actual training of 106 persons,
including stay salaries, travel, and materials, cost an additional $60,000. Because
this was the start-up of the project, heavy emphasis was placed on staffing and
evaluation. The program administrator indicates that these costs were $45,000
per phase in subsequent phases (or about $9,000 per class of S-12 persons).
Although the program is costly, the program administrator believes that it is far
less costly than training the some number of individuals one-on-one, because
many people can be trained at one time.
In order to calculate the benefits of investing in travel training for both the
users and the transit agencies, this research has used the evaluation results from
Phases ~ and IT and extended them over a fiveyrear period. It was assumed that
~ . . ~ ~ ~ .. . .
~ d~ ~ ~ 1 ~
both the member of program participants and the manger or trips per participant
would decline by one-tenth of the original numbers in each year following the first
year after the training, due to increasing ages and infirmities of the participants.
The users saved $! per trip in 1994-96 and, because of a fare increase, save
$~.90 today. This is determined by subtracting the bus fare from the paratransit
fare. User savings on BART are at least as large, due to the heavily discounted
senior and disabled pass. Over a five-year period, participants will collectively
save $2S,440.
The transit agencies will potentially save $407,442 over five years,
assuming each transit trip made by participants offsets one paratransit trip. In
1996, it cost AC Transit $2.35 to provide a fixed-route trip. However, there was
no additional cost calculated to provide the bus and BART trips taken by those
travel trained. since the participants usually ride o~-peak, when the vehicles have
. ~ ~ ,
excess capacity. On the other hand, the paratransit trip providecl by the
consortium costs the transit agencies $25 and, as a demand-responsive service,
would not be otherwise scheduled.
The table below illustrates the benefit/cost ratio of the Travel Training
Project and the net benefits per trip. Although this calculation assumes that only
one-half of the paratransit trips were replaced by bus or BART trips, the actual
paratransit trips replaced will vary greatly, depending on the profile of the
population trained. For example, the participant in a wheelchair who was
interviewed converted 100% of his paratransit trips to college classes into trips on
AC Transit. The elderly Afghan women did not travel by paratransit at all, so all
OCR for page 256
their bus and BART trips were new trips. Frail elderly who have lost some
confidence in their physical abilities may have a trip conversion rate somewhere in
between these two examples.
The benef~t/cost ratio of 1.9 means that for every $l invested in the
program, the benefit is $1.90. Adding the users' and the transit agencies' benefits
together and subtracting the program costs, the net benefit per trip is $4.96.
CALCULATION OF ECONOMIC INDICES
~.,
Provider savings = potential provider ~$407,442 x 0.5 = $203,72
savings x proportion of bus or BART
trips replacing paratransit trips
Plus user savings $2S,440
Equals: total savings $232,161
Divided by program costs $120,000
Equals benefit/cost ratio 1.9
Total trips over 6 years 22,660
Net benefits per trip I $4.95 ll
The user and provider savings shown above have been discounted at 4%
interest to find their equivalent present worth for comparison with the program
cost. Conversion of total savings and costs to equivalent annual amounts would
result in annual savings of $52,150 versus annual costs of $26,956, still producing
a benefit/cost ratio of 1.9.
SOCIETAL BENEFITS
There are societal benefits from the Travel Training Project that are evident
from this research, although they are unquantifiable. These include:
.
A more full participation in society by the elderly and persons with
disabilities.
New tax dollars spent by people who now have access to shopping and
services.
An enhanced image of fixed-route transit's usefulness and safety, due to
ridership by a wider segment of the population.
The Travel Training Project has won the Helen Putnam Award for
Excellence from the League of California Cities and has won an award from the
National Organization on Disability.
6
OCR for page 257
REFERENCES
1. Project Evaluation, June 1994.
7
OCR for page 258
Representative terms from entire chapter:
training project
