Creative Ways to Manage Paratransit Costs

Goodwill, Jay A; Carapella, Holly

doi:10.5038/cutr-nctr-rr-2005-10

Cited by 19 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…For example, a survey in the San Francisco Bay Area showed that 60% of respondents were willing to accept these personalised services [20]. From a transport service operator perspective, fixed-route and fixed-schedule conventional bus services may appear to be cost-effective in urban areas, but they have been found to perform poorly in low-density areas [21] and outside peak hours. Hence, there has been some strong and renewed interest to explore how demand-responsive transport would be beneficial for both users and operators.…”

Section: The Need For Shared On-demand Mobility Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexible Mobility On-Demand: An Environmental Scan

et al. 2019

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On-demand shared mobility is increasingly being promoted as an influential strategy to address urban transport challenges in large and fast-growing cities. The appeal of this form of transport is largely attributed to its convenience, ease of use, and affordability made possible through digital platforms and innovations. The convergence of the shared economy with a number of established and emerging technologies—such as artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and Cloud and Fog computing—is helping to expedite their deployment as a new form of public transport. Recently, this has manifested itself in the form of Flexible Mobility on Demand (FMoD) solutions, aimed at meeting personal travel demands through flexible routing and scheduling. Increasingly, these shared mobility solutions are blurring the boundaries with existing forms of public transport, particularly bus operations. This paper presents an environmental scan and analysis of the technological, social, and economic impacts surrounding disruptive technology-driven shared mobility trends. Specifically, the paper includes an examination of current and anticipated external factors that are of direct relevance to collaborative and low carbon mobility. The paper also outlines how these trends are likely to influence the mobility industries now and into the future. The paper collates information from a wide body of literature and reports on findings from actual ‘use cases’ that exist today which have used these disruptive mobility solutions to deliver substantial benefits to travellers around the world. Finally, the paper provides stakeholders with insight into identifying and responding to the likely needs and impacts of FMoD and informs their policy and strategy positions on the implementation of smart mobility systems in their cities and jurisdictions.

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Section: The Need For Shared On-demand Mobility Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexible Mobility On-Demand: An Environmental Scan

et al. 2019

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“…They do not operate over a fixed route or schedule; and route exceptions are only temporary and rare, only to satisfy a special need or specific pickup and drop-off location request. In cases where the demand response system is set up to accommodate passengers who are unable to use fixed-route transit, the demand response operations are commonly referred to as paratransit (Goodwill and Carapella 2008).…”

Section: Research Scopementioning

confidence: 99%

Rolling stock purchase cost for rail and road public transportation: random-parameter modelling and marginal effect analysis

Murillo-Hoyos

Volovski

Labi

2016

Transportmetrica A: Transport Science

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Public transportation rolling stock is a major item of capital expenditure associated with transit facility construction, expansion, or revitalisation. As such, reliable estimates of the expected purchase costs of rolling stock are critical for analysing the financial feasibility of proposed public transportation systems and financial planning for existing systems. Such cost data are often characterised by heterogeneity of observations that often plagues fixed parameter (FP) model estimation. Therefore, in modelling transit rolling stock costs, it is needed to address such limitations of past studies. Using data from the National Transit Database, this paper addresses the issue through the random parameter (RP) estimation modelling technique, where parameter estimates are allowed to vary across observations according to the most appropriate distribution. The paper demonstrates that the RP modelling technique yields superior estimates compared to the FP model. This is because the former can account for unobserved heterogeneity in transit rolling stock purchase cost data due to unobserved factors that otherwise severely impair the reliability or intuitiveness of the model. The paper also carries out marginal effect and sensitivity analyses on the developed model to acquire a deeper insight into the influence of the cost factors. The RP rolling stock cost models developed in this paper can be applied by public transportation agencies to carry out strategic tasks associated with the development or management of new or existing transit systems, respectively. These tasks include analyses of financial feasibility of proposed transit systems, development of budgets, and projections of cash outflows as part of long-range plans, financial planning, and short-and long-term funding needs assessment for existing or proposed transit systems. Moreover, the findings regarding the influential cost factors can be used to guide purchasing policies for transit rolling stock. ARTICLE HISTORY

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“…SCAT Plus provides paratransit service. SCAT's paratransit cost per passenger in 2007 was $27.92 [14]. The fee for SCAT fixed-route service is $0.75, with the discounted fare of $0.35, with monthly service passes of $40.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since paratransit also often features limitations on the transit rider such as advanced 24-hour reservations and lengthy periods of waiting for pickup before and after a trip is taken, fixed-route public transportation can provide additional independence for able transit riders, including reduced cost to the transit rider. Additional cost savings and benefits related to travel training are documented in the report [14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Travel Assistant Device – Deployment to Transit Agencies

Barbeau¹,

Georggi²,

Winters³

2010

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The ability to travel where and when one desires is a basic requirement for independent living that most people take for granted. To travel independently, a transit rider practices at least 23 skills including finding the route, arriving at the correct stop on time, and determining when to exit at destination. Travel trainers who provide one-on-one instruction on public transportation, report that recognizing a landmark near the desired bus stop, requesting a stop at the proper time, and exiting the bus at the destination stop are among the most challenging skills to master for individuals with cognitive disabilities. Parents/guardians are often reluctant to encourage the use of fixed-route transit due to their own hesitations about a person's abilities and well being. Prior studies by the research team developed the Travel Assistance Device (TAD) mobile phone software application that addresses these challenges and supplements the trainer's instruction. TAD provides various informational prompts including the audio messages "Get ready" and "Pull the cord now!" and vibrates to alert the rider to pull the stop cord. These prompts are delivered to the rider in real-time as he or she rides the bus using the embedded global positioning system (GPS) technology in off-the-shelf cell phones. TAD's real-time location of the rider can be viewed by the travel trainer or family member through a Web page. Previous testing of TAD with the local transit trainer and 12 cognitively disabled individuals on the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit (HART) bus system successfully demonstrated this proof of concept. Even with TAD's standards-based approach, the challenges of deploying TAD to other areas-both technical and resource requirements-were largely unknown. This project deployed TAD to four additional transit agencies in Miami-Dade, Broward, Sarasota, and Pinellas counties in Florida and identified the technical, policy, and administrative hurdles for the adoption of TAD at transit agencies. These deployment tests demonstrate that the TAD application performs successfully in additional cities by using commercially available GPS-enabled cell phones and existing bus stop and schedule datasets provided by transit agencies in the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format. The diversity in how transit agencies provide travel training services, and the extent of the assistance provided by travel trainers, will affect the implementation of TAD. In particular, transit agencies will likely require a local champion, at least in the preliminary stage, to coordinate with early users of TAD at the agency and facilitate a smooth adoption of the technology. Furthermore, having the buy-in of top level management seems to be a necessary component to testing TAD, especially at agencies that do not have designated travel trainers. It was concluded that the availability of an active travel-training program better facilitates TAD deployment to that agency. A human behavior analysis study discussed in this report provided supporting evidence ...

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Creative Ways to Manage Paratransit Costs

Cited by 19 publications

References 2 publications

Flexible Mobility On-Demand: An Environmental Scan

Flexible Mobility On-Demand: An Environmental Scan

Rolling stock purchase cost for rail and road public transportation: random-parameter modelling and marginal effect analysis

Travel Assistant Device – Deployment to Transit Agencies

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