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3. E[E:Y RESEARCH FINDINGS
Public transportation plays a significant role in providing mobility to the
transportation disadvantaged. While most Americans drive an automobile, people
who are young, old, poor or disabled often rely on public transportation as their
lifeline. The title of this research, "Using Public Transportation to Reduce the
Economic, Social and Herman Costs of Personal Immobility," presupposes that
public transportation will exist. However, in these days of declining funds, it is
important to recognize the fundamental premise of availability which underpins
.. . . .. ~ .. ~ . . . . . ~ .. ~ .. . . . ..
this research; therefore, the first and most ObVlOUS mining ot this research IS that
public transportation must be available if it is to be used to address immobility.
This, and the other seven findings of the research, are summarized below, followed
by a discussion of each of the points based upon the literature review, stakeholder
interviews, case studies, and economic analyses of the i! practices investigated.
SUMMARY OF E~:Y FINDINGS
I. Retaining basic public transportation services is critical to improving the
mobility of the transportation disadvantaged.
2. Public transportation practices directed at reducing personal immobility are
economically beneficial.
Public transportation agencies that are able to develop new alliances with
nontraditional partners will have the best results with transportation
practices addressing welfare-to-work, employment and health care.
Opportunities exist for blending a wide array of different Herman and
monetary resources to address immobility.
Public transportation practices bundled with other support services most
effectively address immobility issues related to welfare-to-work, employment,
and health care.
6. Public transportation agencies can provide leadership in economic
development, thereby reducing the costs of immobility.
7. Today's mobility issues, particularly in access to jobs, demand regional
approaches.
8. Simple ideas and programs can yield significant mobility improvements.
I. Retaining basic public transportation services is critical to improving
the mobility of the transportation disadvantaged.
One danger in addressing specific mobility problems such as services to
meet welfare reform or provide access to health care-is the temptation to focus on
the immediate transportation need without considering the health of the basic
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system. For example, in the recent transformation of welfare to workfare, there
was an assumption on the part of many state and local governments that public
transportation was available to meet the new demands. The absence of a
transportation discussion in the federal welfare bill and the lack of specific dollars
for transportation support services is evidence of this assumption. However,
government officials learned what transit operators had been trying to tell them for
years that funding reductions had taken their toll on what public transit could
deliver in many systems around the country.
The AC Transit case study on service reductions is strong confirmation that
these cutbacks hurt the very population that the government is now trying to help
into the job market. AC Transit was forced bY budget shortfalls from reduced state
and federal funds to cut 1,000 weekday platform equivalent hours, thereby saving
$4.8 million. However, a survey conducted during the AC Transit study revealed
that 7.4% of the riders lost $2.2 million in job income as a result of the cuts, and
4.2% were continuing to lose income one year later because they had not found
other employment, amounting to an additional $8.5 million a year. The total
annual costs to the community from the service reductions were $48.1 million.
Over a year after the reductions were implemented, the District responded to
residents in an isolated pocket of its service area by adding back hourly service from
8 p.m. to 1 a.m. Of the approximately 3,000 people living in the area, more than
half were on public assistance and did not have access to a car. To help residents
travel to jobs with evening or night hours, a set-aside in the budget for
experimental programs was used to fund approximately seven months of service.
The District is pursuing new welfare-to-work funds through the county Department
of Social Services and private funding from employers served by the route in order
to continue the route in the new fiscal year. External funding will also be needed to
respond to similar pleas from other constituencies, according to the Manager of
Service Development.
The results of the AC Transit case study demonstrate the importance of
fixed-route service to the community and the impact when it is reduced. Urban
bus service is enormously productive, and its curtailment even in low-
patronage, off-peak hours can create added travel costs and income losses
that exceed by several times the dollar savings to transit agencies from the
service reductions.
The case studies in this research are replete with examples of customized
services that are dependent on the existence of a strong core system-one that
operates 20-24 hours a day, seven days a week. The system must provide reliable
service over a span of hours and days that meet the needs of the local economy. For
example:
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.
SEPTA's Horsham Breeze route to a suburban business park is an extension of
reverse commute bus routes and rail service from the central city. The shuttle
runs six days a week from 6:12 a.m. to 11 p.m. and meets two daily, 21-hour per
day mainline routes.
· MDTA's Medicaid Metropass Program could not exist if basic service levels were
not available to meet the needs of Medicaid patients.
MTA's Immediate Needs Transportation Program is able to grow and serve more
people because of its increasing use of bus tokens. If basic bus service were not
available at the days and hours needed, the program would not be attractive to
the 600 participating social service agencies.
About 48% of MTA's Blue :Line TeleVillage users arrive by transit. The
availability of transit services helps create this "virtual" mobility.
· The private entrepreneur who operates the Numero Uno Supermarket Shuttle
relies on transit access from MTA lines to bring his customers to the store.
The Marion County Department of Social Services worked with PDRTA to
expand an existing route into a 24-hour service in order to link welfare
recipients with entry-level jobs.
The heart of the concept for the Fruilvale BART Transit Village is its location at
a hub well-served by public transportation.
The City of Fremont's Travel Training Program increases mobility for the
elderly and persons with disabilities by training them to ride a fixed-route
system that already exists.
This finding, retaining basic public transportation services is critical
to improving the mobility of the transportation disadvantaged is listed first
because the research term believes it the most important. Investment in a basic
level of transit services will have the broadest impact on reducing personal
immobility for the transportation dependent.
2. Public transportation practices directed at reducing personal
immobility are economically beneficial.
Society benefits when individuals can access more parts of society. The programs in
these case studies save society money by helping to:
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avoid medical institutionalization of the indigent;
prevent crime by providing job training for employment and food for the
hungry;
reduce the demand on more expensive and oversubscribed paratransit
services;
provide an option to a costly ambulance ride for medical care;
· increase the purchasing power enjoyed by transit riders with access to jobs or
to broader market choices; and
relieve other agencies funded by tax dollars of transportation responsibilities
and' thereby increase their productivity.
Although these benefits are not easily quantified, they should not be
overlooked. If transit agencies could incorporate them into new measures for
evaluation, transit's true value to society would be startlingly apparent.
In order to quantify the benefits of these programs in more traditional terms,
an economic analysis was performed for seven of the eleven transportation practices
studied. Four of these involved surveys developed by the research team, and the
other three were based on data gathered from the transportation organization. The
results show a high ratio of benefits to costs, supporting the finding that public
transportation practices directed at reducing personal immobility are economically
beneficial
Below is a table summarizing the results of the economic analyses.
Net Benefit/
Annual Annual Cost Net Annual
Case StudyBenefits Costs Ratio (a/b) Benefits (a-b)
l
a b cd
Completed Analvses
PDRTA,Myrtle Beach $2,176,570 $79,430 27.4$2,097,140
SEPTAHorsham Breeze 1,563,361 213,192 7.31,350,169
MDTAMetropass 7,619,000 1,580,000 4.86,039,000
MTAImmediate Needs 13,951,000 5,400,000 2.68,551,000
OATS, Missouri 13,939,330 6,009,825 2.37,929,505
Fremonttraveltraining 52,150 26,956 1.925,194
AC Transit service cuts 4,759,000 48,100,000 0.1-43,341,000
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As can be seen by the benef~t/cost ratio, SEPTA's Horsham Breeze Shuttle
has a very high rate of return. For every $! invested in this reverse commute
service, there is a benefit of $7.30. Even more astonishing is PDRTA's benefit/cost
ratio of 27.4, made possible because PDRTA has so successfully minimized its out-
of-pocket costs through fares and employer contributions. Transit's role in helping
control health care costs is illustrated by MDTA's Metropass program, which saves
over $6 million a year in federal and state Medicaid dollars. In the case of
Immediate Needs, for the annual $5.4 million invested by MTA, there is a positive
economic benefit in the community of almost $14 million and a benefit/cost ratio of
2.6. Not surprisingly, service cuts have a negative effect on the community. When
AC Transit cut i,000 weekday platform equivalent hours, the annual economic
losses to AC Transit riders were more than $48 million, compared with only $4.S
million in annual savings to AC Transit.
.
Chapter 4 provides guidelines for conducting the type of economic analysis on
which these findings are based.
Public transportation agencies that are able to develop new alliances
with nontraditional partners will have the best results with
transportation practices addressing welfare-to~work, employment and
health care.
The transit industry has been in partnership with state and federal
governments over the years to fund transportation services. However, almost all
the operations spotlighted in the case studies were new services developed with
nontraditional partners, such as:
· . ~
socla. . service agencies
community-based organizations
volunteer groups
businesses, and
local governments.
Illustrations of these nontraditional partners can be highlighted from the
case studies. For example, PDRTA works hand-in-glove with the Department of
Social Services (DSS) to provide service to entry-level jobs for people
transitioning off welfare, and MDTA introduced its Metropass program with the full
involvement of the regional Medicare administrator. One element of both these
successful working relationships is a vested interest shared by both parties. For
example, the Medicaid Program Administrator in Miami had an interest in
reducing the transportation costs for her program; MDTA had an interest in
avoiding additional ADA paratransit trips that would have been required if
Medicaid had stopped taking responsibility for these same trips. The Metropass
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was born from these shared vested interests. Medicaid was also willing to share
control over its clients and database to make the program succeed.
A prime example of a willingness to share control is OATS, where volunteers
prepare monthly schedules, promote ridership, and raise matching funds. The
outcome is a sense of ownership among the County Committee members, who
donate 76,000 hours worth $624,000 per year to the success of the operation. The
MTA and BART case studies represent other examples of willingness to share
control with nontraditional partners. MTA provides general oversight and policy
direction to the Immecliate Needs Transportation Program, which is entirely run by
two community-based organizations, First African Methodist Episcopal
(FAME) Renaissance program any the International Institute of Los
Angeles (~lLA). Similarly, BART has been willing to share control by
relinquishing the lead on development around one of its stations to the Spanish
Speaking Unity Council. Like FAME and IILA, the Unity Council is another
community-based organization with a history of respect and competency among
residents and other institutions.
Fundamental to shared control is a climate of trust between the transit
agencies and their partners. OATS trusts its volunteers with key functions of the
service, and BART and MTA have a corresponding trust with their community-
based partners. In Chesterfield County, South Carolina, building trust was one of
the most important functions of the first two years of the Coordinating Council,
according to the participants. Their director cites "a significant increase in
cooperation of staff at the direct service level" as a result of the time they spent
building trust.
Another issue the Chesterfield County Coordinating Council had to address
was forming a consensus on a common agenda. Although the members agreed with
. ~ ~ ~ ~
1 ~ ~ ~ ~ · 1 · ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ _ ~ _ _ _ _ 1_ _ ~ ~ ·__ ~
the goal of coordination, they were reluctant to take the steps to mane coormnat~on
happen. Only when they were able to agree that sharing each agency's resources
was their best path to coordination were they able to overcome their parochial
concerns. In contrast, BART and the Unity Council share the common goal of
economic development at the Fru~tvale BART station, a goal which serves both the
immediate constituency around the station and BART's broader mission of
diversifying revenues and increasing ridership. The nartnershin between PDRTA
~_` ~ ~ . ~. . .
~ ,,
and ~ works so well because ot tne~r~o~nt agenda to provide transportation to
jobs.
A key ingredient in a successful partnership is the ability to listen to the
partner's needs and respond flexibly. SEPTA's ability to address the employment
needs of private sector partners, such as United Parcel Services and
Prudential, created a win-win opportunity for all parties. The small vehicles and
flexible funding package SEPTA offered to create the Horsham Breeze shuttle
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responded to the image the business park tenants wanted and the share of the
service for which they were willing to pay. The resulting partnership realizes
economies of scale that would not be possible with a single public or private entity
working alone.
Local governments can also make good partners for a transit agency. For
example, MTA has located the management of the Blue Line TeleVillage with the
City of Compton and plans to form similar partnerships with the cities of El
Monte and Inglewood to generate the community buy-in that is necessary for the
long-term funding and usage of other televillages. AC Transit and BAR T funded a
partnership with the City of Fremont to conduct peer travel training for ADA-
elig~ble seniors and persons with disabilities.
The travel training case study illustrates another element of a successful
partnership: an action orientation with scheduled, short-term results. Every rider
trained in the s~x-session course who takes a fixed-route trip instead of a
paratransit trip saves the transit agencies $25. Riders themselves save $1.90 per
trip. Thus, the savings from the training not only occurred immediately but
continues over the long run. In Miami, MDTA and the Medicare Program
Administrator also adopted an action agenda, by challenging the status quo. The
excellent, short-term results from their pilot program with 126 people have
snowballed to 3,600 people, saving Medicaid $503,000 a month and MDTA a
potential $10 million a year.
Important elements of agreements with nontraditional partners, as
illustrated above by the case studies, can be summarized as follows:
a vested interest shared by all parties;
a willingness to share control;
a climate of trust;
consensus on a common agenda;
an ability to listen to the partner's needs and respond flexibly; and
an action orientation with scheduled, short-term results.
Dramatic changes are occurring in the delivery of health care and reform of
the welfare system that directly impact transit properties. These case studies
identif y transit operators that are ahead of the curve in meeting these societal and
political shifts in priorities. By designing services in conjunction with their
nontraditional partners, they have been able to respond effectively to these external
influences and meet the needs of the transportation disadvantaged.
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4. Opportunities exist for blending a wide array of different human and
monetary resources to address immobility.
This finding is a byproduct of the partnerships discussed in the previous
item. These partnerships have expanded transit's resources by providing new
funding sources or alternative methods of administering services. The result has
been additional services that increase mobility for the transportation
disadvantaged.
Two agencies studied particularly stand out for their creative packaging of
funds: OATS and the Spanish Speaking Unity Council, which is leading the
Fruitvale BART Transit Village development. Below is a list of the wide range of
funding sources that have been garnered in support of their transit projects:
OATS REVENUE BUDGET
FRUIlrVALE BART
TRANSIT VILLAGE
Federal Highway Administration
Federal Transit Administration
City of Oakland Community
Development Block Grant
Special Billings/Contracts (24.~%)
Cities and counties
Medical centers and HMOs
Dialysis clinics
Retirement housing
Universities
Chamber of commerce
Local school districts
Social service agencies
Medicaid transportation
Rider Contributions (5.7%)
Group Travel (2.~%)
Local Cash (2.~%)
Non-Transit Resource (0.3%)
Missouri Dept. of Mental Health (3.2%)
Missouri Elderly and Handicapped
Transportation Assistance Program
(0.4%)
U.S. Area Agency on Aging (40.6%)
U.S. Dept. of Transportation (20.2%)
City of Oakland bond measure
U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban
Development
U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency
City of Oakland Enhanced Enterprise
Community Fund
City of Oakland redevelopment funds
Alameda Co. Congestion
Management Agency
U.S. Dept. of Commerce
Ford Foundation
Hewlitt Foundation
I=oans and lines of credit
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Add to this list the additional funding sources *om partnerships that have been
developed by other case study agencies: businesses and the county (SEPTA); the
state Department of Social Services (PDRTA and CCCC); other contracts, such as
Amtrak (PDRTA); the school district (CCCC); and Medicare (MDTA).
Besides direct funding, transit agencies can leverage their own funds by
tapping human resources available *om partners. Volunteers donate 76,000 hours
valued at $623,00 a year to OATS budget. The 600 social service agencies that
participate in MTA's Immediate Needs Transportation Program provide an in-kind
contribution by helping MTA fulfill its mission of increasing mobility for Los
Angeles County residents.
5. Public transportation practices bundled with other support services
most effectively address immobility issues related to welfare-to-work,
employment, and health care.
Chapter 2 discussed the characteristics of the transportation disadvantaged
and previous public policies that attempted to address immobility. One conclusion
that can be drawn is that immobility is an indicator of other social issues that
typically cannot be addressed by transportation alone.
This research uncovered a number of examples of how transportation
agencies have worked with others to bundle services. Here again, these practices
are an outgrowth of elective partnerships.
Bridges to Work is one of the most systematically organized programs. The
design is based on collaborative planning with job training and placement
organizations, transportation providers, community-based organizations, human
services agencies, and regional planning institutions. The program, which is being
tested in Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee, and St. Louis, consists of:
Metropolitan Placement to help inner-city residents locate job openings,
particularly in the suburbs;
Targetec] Commute to connect inner-city residents to previously inaccessible
employment locations; and
Support Services to mitigate demands created by a commute to distant job
locations, including extended child-care arrangements, a guaranteed ride home
in an emergency, and conflict resolution with co-workers.
Similarly, most of the case studies validate this emphasis on support services
that are packaged with transportation. For example:
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.
The City of Fremont's Travel Training Program recognizes that persons who are
elderly or disabled may need the support of peer training to develop the
confidence to ride AC Transit and BART fixed routes.
The Department of Social Services in Marion County, South Carolina includes
PDRTA's rural commute routes with other assistance it offers to Family
Independence Act recipients, along with job placement, family living skills
classes, child care subsidies, and post-placement counseling.
The Chesterfield County Coordinating Council and the MTA Immediate Needs
Transportation Program have at their heart the integration of transportation
and social services to address human needs holistically.
Recognition of the importance of support services extends to other aspects of
economic development and welfare-to-work programs. The federal government, for
example, instituted the Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Communities initiative
in 1994, an economic development program which is also designed to address social
problems, including immobility. Besides over $l billion in funds, the selected
communities are eligible for other supporting programs, such as tax-exempt facility
~ ~ ~ ~ · ~ ~ · 1 ~ dA' 1 · ~ · 1
nones, employer wage crewcuts, certain tax cteouct~ons, anct assistance in overcoming
regulatory barriers. This program recognizes that a strategic vision for change
... . . ~..
must encompass multiple aspects or a community such as economic opportunit',r,
· ~1
~ , .
sustainable Development, community-based partnerships, and stimuli for private
sector investments. Transportation is a mandatory component in each comm~,nity~s
strategic plan.
In the area of welfare reform, the South Carolina Department of Social
Services (DSS) is an example of a comprehensive approach which includes both
assistance to the client, as described in the paragraph above on Marion County, and
incentives for the employer. These incentives include: (34)
Work Experience Program, an unsalaried, apprenticeship program that allows
employers to observe and train prospective employees at no cost;
Work Supplementation Program, which allows employers to hire interns at
minimum wage and be reimbursed at $~.10 per hour;
Family Independence Employer Tax Credit equal to 20% of the eligible
employee's wages per month for the first year ant} declining to 10% by the third
year;
New Jobs Tax Credit of $1,500 to $4,500 per job per year for up to five years;
dote Development Training Fee equal to 2-5% of a new employee's state
withholding taxes for 15 years, which can be used for transportation as well as
training, training facilities, real estate, infrastructure or to meet environmental
regulations; and
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Job Retraining Fee, a retention of up to $500 in state withholding taxes for each
production employee to be retrained for a maximum of $2~000 per employee over
five years.
The Enterprise Communities initiative and the South Carolina DSS program
are cited to illustrate how current thinking places importance on an inclusive
approach to addressing societal problems. In their book, Auto, Transit, and Cities,
d.R. Meyer and d.A. Gomez-Ibanez explain the failure of early reverse commute
programs:
"When compared with racial discrimination or lack of skills and education,
employment decentralization and inadequate or expensive public
transportation appeared to be relatively minor causes of unemployment (or
underemployment) among low income central city residents."~35)
In other words, although transportation is an essential component in solving
immobility, it will not resolve the problem in and of itself, because the origins of
immobility are entangled in demographic, geographic and cultural causes as well.
Transit staffs need a new set of skills and knowledge to integrate these socio-
economic factors into their service planning and delivery. By bundling
transportation solutions with packages of support services, public transportation
providers will attack the problem more comprehensively, with a higher likelihood of
success.
6. Public transportation agencies can provide leadership in economic
development' thereby reducing the costs of immobility.
The suburbanization of jobs has followed the suburbanization of residences.
As of 1990, the suburbs account for 60% of the metropolitan work force. Today, just
one-quarter of the American people live in central cities, and the largest proportion
of people half the population-live, work, and shop in urban areas outside the
central city.(36) At the same time, poverty and disadvantage are concentrated in
the former central cities.~37)
Transit agencies have responded with operational improvements designed to
address this jobs/housing mismatch. The two reverse commute routes studied for
this research are good examples. PDRTA takes employees from rural South
Carolina to jobs in the tourist industry at Myrtle Beach, a commute of one to two
hours. Although International Paper is building 50,000 homes near Myrtle Beach,
prices are out of the range of these riders, necessitating this continuing commute for
entry-level workers. SEPTA's Horsham Breeze allows employees to transfer from
main line routes originating in Philadelphia to a shuttle route looping around a job-
rich suburban business park. The average commute is one hour and 28 minutes one
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way. Prudential's decision to locate its telephone center in a suburban business
park instead of downtown Philadelphia is illustrative of the suburbanization of jobs,
the cause behind the mismatch of potential employees with job locations.
What the long-term prospects for these routes will be cannot be known at this
time. Will workers become discouraged by such long bus commutes and purchase
an automobile as soon as possible? Auto ownership may become more feasible when
.. . . . .
~ ..'
these employees nave work experience which allows them to advance to nigher-
paying jobs. Whatever ill effects may occur for transit ridership or road congestion,
auto ownership under today's land use patterns will definitely increase the personal
mobility of these workers. Thus, the reverse commutes will have given these
employees an opportunity for entry into the personal mobility enjoyed by most
Americans.
On the other hand, increased auto ownership by these current employees
may not affect the viability of the reverse commute routes if the experience of
United Parcel Service (UPS) in Horsham Township is any evidence. UPS has an
extremely high employee turnover rate and is constantly recruiting new applicants,
who will need the bus service. Burner King in Myrtle Beach has jobs that no
~ - ~i ~
begging, and is willing to subsidize the PDRTA routes to enlarge its labor pool.
Even ass~...ing a change in current land use policies occurs, the jobs/housing
imbalance cannot be corrected in anything but a long time frame. Therefore, it is
likely that such operational strategies as those implemented by PDRTA and SEPTA
will continue to be needed for economic development as long as the economy
remains strong.
Two California transit agencies spotlighted in these cases studies are
involved in long-term land use changes that can have a more permanent impact on
economic development. The Fruilvale BART Transit Village is being built at a rail
station. Its central feature will be a large pedestrian plaza surrounded by small
retail uses, multi-family dwellings, and public services. The design responds to
immobility by moving the services to the people who need them and clustering the
development around a transit hub. SimilarlY. MTA's Blue Line TeleVilla~e moves
· . . ~ ~ ~ . ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
services to tne people, DUt tnrougn tecnno~og~Y. Located at the City of Compton's
transit hub, the TeleViliage allows residents and employees to access many services
electronically, without the need to travel.
Both of these case studies are examples of transit as part of a larger economic
development strategy. A 1996 TCRP report entitled Transit and Urban Form
discusses the relationship between mobility and economic development: "Reduction
in accessibility and service quality accelerates the economic decline of city
neighborhoods and business districts." The report goes on to list characteristics of
regions with successful transit-oriented development, including these
characteristics related to economic development:
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.
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regional growth that channels development to station areas;
transit stations located in areas where the market supports development;
regional policies that focus growth in transit corridors and limit it elsewhere;
station-area policies and programs to support private sector investments and
transit-friendly development; and
long-term commitment. (38)
Public transportation can have an important role in economic development,
both through operational improvements and through land use strategies. However,
it cannot substitute for sound land use decisions.
7. Today's mobility issues, particularly in access to jobs, Reman regional
approaches.
Another outgrowth of the jobs/housing mismatch discussed above is the need
for transit agencies to enlarge the sphere of influence used in their planning,
perhaps even beyond their own service areas. This need surfaced during interviews
with staff at the Employment Development Department (EDD) conducted in the AC
Transit case study. EDD representatives indicated that 67% of their caseload of
people looking for jobs live in Oakland, which lacks enough jobs to meet the
caseload's demand. The jobs are in the southern portion of the county and adjacent
counties, which are very poorly connected by public transportation to Oakland. In
Chesterfield County, South Carolina the same type of problem was identified for
access to health care. Only one of the five hospitals that patients need to go to is in
the county.
Nationally, only 6% of welfare recipients have cars.~39) Yet, most new job
growth is occurring in the suburbs, largely inaccessible by public transportation.
Clearly, the nation cannot rely on transit alone to solve this piece of welfare refocus.
It will take a great deal of collaboration on the part of governments, businesses,
non-profit agencies, churches, metropolitan planning organizations, and other
leading institutions to help knit together a plan that addresses immobility across
jurisdictional and institutional boundaries.
The case study on the Chesterfield County Coordinating Council (CCCC)
shows how difficult this coordination can be, even in a small rural area. Before
coordination could be undertaken, CCCC members had to confront turf battles,
dissolve resentment between agencies, and build trust and rapport. The barriers to
coordination were similar to those found in other recent TCRP studies conducted by
Crain & Associates(40) and in the literature search for this research. Some of the
underlying issues hindering regionalism include:
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lack of understanding about other institutions' goals and services;
reluctance to share scarce resources for fear that the agency~s own programs will
suffer;
worry that the bigger or more powerful agencies will overpower the desires of
the smaller or less powerful agencies;
suspicion that revealing costs will reflect unfavorably without taking into
account basic differences among the agencies;
inability to change inhibiting federal, state and local regulations;
concern about inappropriate measures of success applied to nontraditional
services;
fear of job loss;
competition for funding, prestige, control, any personal recognition; and
pressure in the political environment to promote local interests over regional
goals.
Clearly, society should not expect quick fixes leading to regionalism that can
overcome decades of separateness and autonomy. Yet, despite these barriers. there
~. ~. ~ .
are examples of agencies moving torwarct across regional Ames with coordinated
services.
Oftentimes, the regional approach is part of a larger corporate strategy of
mobility management. MTA's Immediate Needs Transportation Program, using
taxis as well as buses, serves facilities in all of Taos Angeles County, even though
other fixed-route operators exist in some of the outlying cities. MTA program staff
expect that Immediate Needs will become part of a three-tiered strategy in the
agency's Long Range Transit Plan. High frequency, high capacity buses would
comprise tier one; 40-foot buses along fixed lines with flexible routing in the
neighborhoods would comprise tier two; tier three would be a community-based
network, including point deviation routes, late night taxi service, Immediate Needs,
and the currently contracted Americans with Disabilities Act program. The
program would become part of a portfolio of services available to the nine million
people of Los Angeles County.
Similarly, PDRTA and OATS, serving 11 and 87 counties respectively, look at
the various components of their services as pieces of a corporate vision embracing
mobility as a goal. In discussing its rural commute services, PDRTA states,
"PDRTA is accepting the critical responsibility of providing the coordinated,
efficient, and specialized transportation network which will allow these people to
have access to job opportunities."~41 ~ The fact that PDRTA crosses into the service
area of another operator in order to bring its residents to jobs in Myrtle Beach
demonstrates that transit connections between residential areas and workers earl
be designed regionally instead of locally. And OATS' mission is to "provide reliable
transportation for transportation disadvantaged Missourians so they can live
independently in their own communities."~42) Both these statements exhibit the
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core institutional state of mind that looks for opportunities, the characteristic of a
mobility management agency.
The Job Oasis Worker Mobility Project in Chicago is a multi-agency
partnership that not only coordinates transportation within a region but also
coorcizr~ates services across disciplines. Managed by the nonprofit Suburban
JobLink, Inc., it provides a mix of fixed-route, subscription and vanpoo] services for
unemployed and inner-city residents on Chicago's West Side to jobs in suburban
industrial parks around O'Hare Airport. Support services include job placement
and job retention services, referrals to child care, and a guaranteed ride home
program. Partners include the PACE Suburban Bus Company and key Chicago and
county employment and training councils.
County lines and transit service area boundaries are artificial barriers for
people who need to cross them to get to the jobs and services they need. The same
tailored approaches described above for job-access transportation are also necessary
for the design of transportation to regional services, such as hospitals and clinics,
food banks, and crisis centers. Given the patterns of land use and demography that
now exist in the United States, regional approaches are essential to address the
economic, social, and Herman costs of immobility.
S. Simple ideas and programs can yield significant mobility
improvements.
Many of the programs studied in this research began with simple ideas which
have yielded significant results:
OATS is a shoestring operation that makes things happen through extensive use
of volunteers and creative blending of a wide variety of funding sources.
MDTA designed the Metropass as a pragmatic approach for transporting
Medicare clients who are able to ride fixed-route transit.
MTA provides oversight to the Immediate Needs Transportation Program, run
by community-based organizations with a wide network of social service
agencies, and based on existing taxi and bus services.
The City of Fremont's Travel Training Program teaches persons who are elderly
or disabled to ride fixed-route transit through the use of peers.
The CCCC created a new fixed route system in rural South Carolina by layering
it onto existing dial-a-ride services. Bus stops for the general public are
designated along dial-a-ride routes that are consistent, such as from a board-
and-care home to a sheltered workshop.
Including these simple, independent programs into the overall strategy of a
company will reinforce the mobility management ethos of the organizations, which
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emphasizes moving people rather than the mode of transportation. Including them
can also be more effective than considering them as adjuncts to the agency's
mission, by assuring the programs greater funding security and integration within
the organization.
None of these programs are elaborate concepts; none required costly capital
investments. Yet, as Finding 2 illustrates, the net annual benefits range from
thousands to millions of dollars. The following chapter is a Methodologies Guide. It
discusses how these n~nbers were derived and describes the steps to perform an
economic analysis of transit projects.
.
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CHAPTER REFERENCES
(34) "Working Together & Building Better Lives," DSS Brochure 12112 (Nov 96)
The South Carolina Department of Social Services.
(35) Meyer, d.R. and Gomez-Ibanez, d.A., Auto, Transit, ant] Cities. A Twentieth
Century Fund Report, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (1981) p.
231.
(36) Cox, W. "The Livable American City, Toward an Environmentally Friendly
American Dream," The State Factor, American Legislative Exchange Council,
Vol. 19, No. 3 (August 19931.
(37) Hughes, Mark, Over the Horizon: Jobs in the Suburbs of Major Metropolitan
Areas, Report to Public/Private Ventures (December 19931.
(38) Transit and Urban Form, TCRP Report 16, Transportation Research Board
Washington, D.C. (19961.
(39) "Welfare-to-Work: Mosaic of Services Helping Link People and Employment,"
Commuter Connections, Vol. 6, Issue 3, Third Quarter 1997, MetroPool,
StamforcI, Connecticut.
(40) See TCRP Report 14, Crain & Associates, Inc., "Institutional Barriers to
Intermodal Transportation Policies and Planning in Metropolitan Areas"
(19961; TCRP Report 21, Crain & Associates, Inc., "Strategies to Assist Local
Transportation Agencies in Becoming Mobility Managers," (199~31.
(41) Pee Dee Regional Transportation Authority Five Year Capitalization Project
(April, 19971.
(42) OATS, Inc., 1996 Annual Report, Colombia, Missouri (19971.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
social services
