Objective

Demand Responsive Transit (DRT) services have become a key element in providing freedom of movement to mobility impaired individuals. What is more, DRT service concepts have the potential to transform fixed-route bus lines into a form of transportation that could significantly reduce urban traffic congestion by providing the necessary flexibility, convenience, and cost efficiency to allow public transit to compete with private automobiles. A variety of advanced technologies and management practices have been proposed to improve the performance of DRT systems. Under a grant from PATH, we conducted a nationwide benchmarking study involving an analysis of data from 62 transit agencies that provide DRT service to large and medium sized urban areas. We evaluated the impact of implemented technologies and practices on productivity and operating cost measures derived from the 1997-1999 National Transit Database (NTD). Our analysis has shown that Paratransit CAD systems and Financial Penalty/Incentive clauses in service contracts both produce statistically significant impacts. However, at the time of the study many agencies had only recently implemented these and other technologies/practices. The factors that we have identified to date explain only a small fraction of the observed variation in the performance measures. A better understanding of the factors that influence the productivity and operating cost of DRT systems is necessary to improve the efficiency of stand-alone services and to design effective hybrid systems. This project expands upon our previous study.

In particular, we plan:

1. To significantly update our previous analysis of the impacts of management practices and advanced technologies on the productivity and operating cost of DRT systems,
2. To investigate the modes of use of Paratransit CAD technology,
3. To investigate the performance metrics tied to Financial Penalty and Incentive clauses in contracts between transit agencies and service providers, and
4. To identify factors that transit agency representatives consider to be explanatory of productivity and operating cost performance.

Methodology

Our previous study, as well as the report Advanced Public Transportation Systems Deployment in the United States, Year 2000, Update (Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, 2002), indicates that several agencies have implemented advanced technologies since 1999. Data from the 2000 and 2001 NTD is now available; and, the 2002 NTD should become available during the first quarter of 2004. We now have an opportunity to analyze the performance impact of several technology implementations that we were not able to evaluate previously.

We plan to update our previous performance analysis using the 2000-2002 data. The revised analysis should clarify some of the previously identified relationships, such as those where productivity and cost did not demonstrate corresponding impacts. The new analysis could also reveal additional relationships that were previously obscured by unassignable variation in the data.

Regression analysis techniques will be used to identify statistically significant relationships between technologies/practices and the performance measures. Initially, each year's data will be analyzed separately. The combined data set including all 6 years, 1997-2002, will also be analyzed in an attempt to identify relationships that might otherwise be obscured by residual variation. Finally, for technologies and practices found to have a statistically significant relationship to performance, an analysis of pre- vs. post-implementation performance will be conducted for agencies that implemented during 1998-2001.

We will conduct a survey of agencies that have implemented Paratransit CAD systems to obtain a description of the ways in which the technology is utilized. We will begin the survey by making personal contact (on-site in Southern California, by telephone throughout the rest of the country) with representatives of a few selected agencies. These personal interviews will feature open-ended questions designed to allow the agency representatives to freely describe their usage of the CAD system. From these results, we will design a written survey to be administered via U.S. Postal Service or e-mail. The written survey will be sent to all of the remaining agencies identified as users of Paratransit CAD systems. The results of this survey will be analyzed for relationships to performance data.

We will also contact agencies that use Financial Penalty clauses and/or Financial Incentive clauses in their contracts with service providers to request details of the criteria used to activate the penalty/incentive clauses. This information will allow us to determine whether or not the clauses are formulated in such a manner that could induce service providers to make trade-offs between financial compensation and productivity performance.

In order to identify additional factors that may influence DRT performance, it will be necessary to solicit free-form responses to probing questions that explore the experience and expertise of agency representatives. During the course of our personal contacts with the select group of agencies mentioned above, we will also ask open-ended questions designed to allow the agency representatives to freely associate operational characteristics with performance. From these results, we will formulate additional questions to be included in the written survey of all the remaining agencies that provide DRT service. The results from these questions will be evaluated to determine the impact of the newly identified factors upon DRT productivity and operating cost.