Contracting for Bus and Demand-Responsive Transit Services A Survey of U.S. Practice and Experience: Special Report 258 (2001) / Chapter Skim
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1. Introduction
1. Introduction
Pages 15-26
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State and local governments match and supplement these grants with funds for transit operations, equipment, and facilities. This large public investment continues a decades-long government commitment to the provision of transit in the United States.
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Of the nearly 500 systems offering fixed-route bus and demand-responsive services that received federal aid in 1998 (the most recent year of available data) , about 40 percent supplied all services directly, 39 percent purchased some services from outside contractors, and the remaining 21 percent purchased all their services.
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Transit Systems with No Contracts for DemandResponsive Service 36% Systems with No Contracts for Bus Services 70% F I G U R E 1 - 2 (continued) Percent of transit systems that contract for all, some, and no bus and demand-responsive transit services: (b)
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This ratio has changed very little during the past few years. The aggregate data on purchased transportation collected by ETA provide an incomplete picture of transit service contracting in the United States, however.
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Recent trends invehicle-hours directly operated and purchased for (b) demand-responsive services, and {c)
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Yet other transit agencies have developed Tong-standing agreements with individual transit providers both public and private— whose contracts are renegotiated periodically, but who, as a practical matter, are subject to little if any regular competition. Transit service contracting received much attention during the 1980s and early l990s, when federal policies favoring outsourcing led to numerous experiments and studies of transit service contracting while stirring much debate about its effects.
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The Transportation Research Board, in conducting the study, consider the number of grant recipients that have contracted out services, the size of the population served by such grant recipients, the basis for decisions regarding contracting out, and the extent to which contracting out was affected by the integration and coordination of resources of transit agencies and other Federal agencies and programs; and (2) The panel conducting the study shall include representatives of transit agencies, employees of transit agencies, private contractors, academic and policy analysts, and other interested persons.
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The aim in addressing these questions was to shed more light on the many purposes, methods, and outcomes of transit service contracting information that should prove valuable to transit policy makers and managers in deciding whether to contract and how to make contracting programs work better. Approach and Scope Given the lack of detail on contracted services in FTA's National Transit Database, as well as the agency-specific nature of most recent research on contracting, the committee decided to obtain additional data on the practice by conducting its own nationwide survey of public transit systems.
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General managers from agencies that do not now contract were asked to cite the reasons for this decision. The survey focused specifically on contracting for fixed-route bus and demand-responsive transportation services, which account for the vast majority of contracting practice in the United States.
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To supplement and illuminate the survey results, the committee also selected five transit systems for more detailed telephone interviews with the transit agency managers, private contractors, and local labor union and elected officials most knowledgeable about contracting decisions and programs to obtain their perspectives on contracting experiences. Along with reports from the literature, these interviews provided ideas on how to analyze and interpret the survey results.
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Note 1. The committee recognizes that some public transit providers receive aid from other federal programs, such as Medicaid, and that others do not receive any federal aid at all; however, tailoring and administering surveys to such a varied population would have exceeded the time and resources available for this project.
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