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Transit Systems in College and University Communities (2008)

Chapter: Chapter One - Introduction

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Suggested Citation:"Chapter One - Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Transit Systems in College and University Communities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14201.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter One - Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Transit Systems in College and University Communities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14201.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter One - Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Transit Systems in College and University Communities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14201.
×
Page 5
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter One - Introduction." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Transit Systems in College and University Communities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14201.
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3Transit Systems in College and University Communities is an update of TCRP’s Synthesis 39, published in 2001. The previ- ous report, Transportation on College and University Cam- puses, surveyed 30 campus communities, offering information on the planning, implementation, and operation of campus transit systems (Miller 2001). This 2008 synthesis broadens the scope of the subject by moving from a campus-based focus to a focus on the communities where the schools are located. The study was opened up more extensively to other types of systems, including local and regional transportation systems serving college and university campuses. This report addresses the breadth of transportation services available in communities with a college or university. These communities may be served by a school-run system, a munic- ipal or regional system, or both (in addition to other types of providers, including private enterprises). One of the underlying questions of this report regards the structure of transportation offered in college and university communities, including the interactions between services and unusual and innovative partnership strategies used to enhance services for students, faculty, staff, and the surrounding community. In conducting the analysis, we found that in many cases respondents pro- vided substantially different answers depending on what type of system they operate: a local public transit operator or local government running a transit system, or a school operating services directly for students and/or the whole community. For this reason, and because we aim to address the nature of transportation in university and college communities com- prehensively, we have in some cases described the responses of those two types of systems separately. METHODOLOGY Several methods of collecting data were used. First, a review of relevant literature was conducted to evaluate the key trends and issues in planning, developing, and operating transit and transit-related services on or around college and university campuses. Materials examined included articles published in peer-reviewed journals and an industry newsletter, and pub- lications, including annual reports, produced by schools and public transit operators. The second data collection method was an original survey. The survey was distributed as a web-based survey to which an invitation was e-mailed to a group of respondents as described here. Because the scope of this study is fairly broad, the survey included many questions. To encourage contacts to respond to the survey, two formats of the survey were pro- vided: a full form with 84 questions and a short form with 66 questions. Respondents could choose which survey to answer. Copies of the survey were provided in a printable format to facilitate collection of answers over time, which could then be entered into the web survey forms. Completed surveys were accepted from December 18, 2007 through February 22, 2008. (Copies of the two surveys can be found in Appendixes A and B.) Potential respondents to the survey included colleges and universities, public transit operators, and private transit oper- ators. Contacts for respondents came from two sources: the initial contact list of the 2001 TCRP Synthesis 39: Trans- portation on College and University Campuses (including 30 respondents and 18 non-respondents to the survey solicited for that publication) and contacts derived from three e-mail lists maintained by APTA relating to transit in university communities. Finally, focused case studies of several transit systems based on literature, documents provided by the systems, responses to the survey, and interviews provide details on exemplary practices in the key content areas of the report. STATISTICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND RESPONSE RATE The time frame for completion of this TCRP report was mid- 2008. Therefore, the timeline necessitated placing the survey window in part over winter break, when many schools are not in session and holiday periods are typically taken. Moreover, because of the change in topic focus between the 2001 and current study (from a campus-based focus to a focus on the communities where the schools are located), the study was opened up more extensively to other types of systems, includ- ing a broader reach toward local and regional (rather than school-based) transportation services. The synthesis panel therefore requested that the survey be distributed widely to reach more types of potential respondents and garner a larger number of responses. Two groups of potential respondents were invited to com- plete the survey. Because tracking trends over time across a common peer group is beneficial, the 30 schools that had par- ticipated in the 2001 survey were the first group of respondents CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

recruited for the survey. These original respondents were con- tacted individually by telephone to announce the upcoming survey. Additionally, the survey was also e-mailed to 18 con- tacts that had been invited to participate in the 2001 study but had declined at that time. The list of transit providers that responded to the survey is presented in Appendix C; those noted with asterisks were among the original 30 schools. The survey was also e-mailed to contacts derived from three e-mail lists maintained by APTA relating to transit in university communities. From these lists, a total of 514 elec- tronic addresses were e-mailed the survey. A large number of these addresses, however, can be excluded from consider- ation (voided) for the purpose of calculating the response rate for several reasons. First, a large number of e-mails bounced and were therefore never received. Second, many e-mail addresses actually represented multiple contacts at the same school or organization, and only one survey from each orga- nization could be expected. Third, some contacts derived from the lists were not eligible respondents because their services were not reasonably related to the content of this study and were therefore eliminated (for example, companies manufac- turing components used in the production of buses). Finally, initial survey invitees were eliminated because they responded that they were not valid contacts. An overall total of 307 valid invitations were issued. In total, 152 transit service providers responded for a response rate of 50%. However, only 94 provided enough complete and useful responses to inform our analysis. Therefore, in final tally, the study team received 77 complete responses to the full survey and 17 responses to the short survey. The list of all respondents for which full and usable surveys were received is presented in Appendix C. Since not all questions applied to all systems, the response rate to each question varied as some respondents were able to answer different questions about their systems. For example, a greater percentage of schools was able to answer questions about parking policies in campus areas than were government entities. A full breakdown of the response rates to each ques- tion is presented in Appendix D. Note that respondents were permitted to estimate answers, and so particularly for the questions about cost figures (fees, financing, etc.) and other numeric values answers have been tabulated in more appro- priate summary formats. There are two important caveats for readers of this report. First, it should be remembered that when percentages or a number of responses are indicated in the question-by-question analysis, this refers to the percentage of responses to that question rather than to the overall survey response rate. In other words, most questions reflect the responses of the sub- set of respondents who answered that question. Second, all answers to the survey are self-reported answers—that is to say, respondents supplied what they believed was the most appropriate answer for their system. For example, one question 4 asks about the urban, small urban/suburban, semi-rural, or rural character of the school’s setting; these adjectives were not defined in the survey and therefore are up to the interpretation of the respondent. This was intentional, and allowed respon- dents to reflect their experiences most genuinely at the expense of rigid comparability between systems, and this tradeoff should simply be kept in mind when reading. REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND INDUSTRY TRENDS Issues involving transportation in college and university com- munities must be viewed in the context of a broader set of changes taking place in two industries: higher education and public transit. As enrollment in colleges and universities increases, campuses are adding institutional space, often in settings where land is a significant constraint. Moreover, employees at universities are a significant source of trans- portation demand for the campus, as employees drive in from more affordable housing in the suburbs. The result is that students, faculty, and staff compete more acutely for fewer available parking spaces. Providing access to college and university campuses has accordingly risen in the list of pri- orities for cities and higher education administrators. The development and maintenance of parking has grown increas- ingly costly, spurring administrators to investigate alternative options. Moreover, in situations where available, developable land is constrained, the option to add more parking is unavail- able except, perhaps, on the periphery of the campus. The role of transit in supplying access to campuses in both envi- ronments has, in many places, shifted in several critical ways in recent years, providing institutions, local governments, and transit providers with both new challenges and new opportu- nities in increasing mobility and access. Several main themes emerge from the variety of documents reviewed for this synthesis. Among them are transit funding/ fares and community partnerships; sustainability and the focus on environmental initiatives; parking and parking pricing, often as a subset of transportation demand management mea- sures that campuses may use to reduce dependency on the automobile; and promotion and/or improvement of alternative travel mode options, such as walking, bicycling, carpooling, and carsharing. Public Transit and Partnerships Transit agencies and universities are increasingly partnering to provide services. TCRP Report 111: Elements Needed to Create High Ridership Transit Systems states that, among 100 public transit agencies reviewed, partnerships with uni- versities and other schools were the most frequently used specific strategy for increasing ridership (TranSystems et al. 2007). Moreover, partnerships with universities were identi- fied as a strategy that is applicable and appropriate in all types of urban and rural settings for both bus and rail modes. The

5particulars may differ from place to place, but the number of inter-agency/school partnerships is large and the types of arrangements diverse. For all parties, there are significant benefits gained from partnerships. The support (financial and otherwise) of large local institutions can significantly assist local transit agencies that serve students, faculty, and staff as a major component of their customer base; TCRP Report 111 indicates that “agencies that serve major universities tend to have signifi- cantly higher per capita ridership figures than do other com- parably sized areas” and that the specific routes serving a campus are often the most heavily patronized (TranSystems et al. 2007). Moreover, universities and colleges can often enhance transit availability on campus by partnering with a local agency to extend specialized services to campus that it might otherwise not sponsor independently, such as a campus circulator. As noted in Report 111, for example, Capital Area Transportation Authority in Lansing, Michigan, took over a shuttle previously operated by Michigan State University under a contract arrangement that provided for 28,200 h of vehicle service in its first year. As stated in TCRP Report 53: New Paradigms for Local Public Transit Organizations, “many universities have rethought both parking and transportation policies and have either abandoned their own separate transit operations or successfully downsized and integrated them with local public transportation services” (Cambridge Systematics, Inc. 1999). Many transit operations now have enhanced systems of fare integration with local universities. One method of approaching this is the unlimited access pass (or U-Pass), wherein a fee paid by the university (and often passed on to students and/or staff, explicitly or indirectly) purchases or reduces the price for unlimited-ride transit passes on a local transit system. Some of these programs are decades old, and may supplement or wholly replace the need for transit ser- vices run exclusively on campus by the school itself, depend- ing on the context of the campus in the urban environment, the services available from the local transit system, and the partnership opportunities available. Some of the benefits of these programs realized by the public-at-large include reduced congestion and improved air quality (McCollom and Pratt 2004). Parking and Parking Pricing There is a strong emphasis on the competing demands of parking and institutional uses for prime campus space, under- scoring the dilemma of providing consistent access to campus facilities as they expand over a fixed space. Shoup (2007) posits that two frameworks for addressing parking management have emerged—economic and political—and that these greatly influence the parking climate “on the ground.” To illustrate the political model, Shoup cites University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where 175 different “ranks” of park- ing permits determine the subset of spaces in which a driver may park (and to an extent, social pecking order). There, the ultimate “X” permit, which allows access to any space on campus, offers the kind of top status that at other schools (including California Institute of Technology and University of California at Berkeley), is bestowed only to Nobel laureates in the form of a reserved parking space. The economic model attempts to more closely relate park- ing prices to the cost of supplying parking and, in some cases, the relative convenience of the space obtained. In many cases, the cost to own a parking permit is far lower than the cost to operate and maintain the spot; when the capital cost of con- struction is considered, the difference amounts to a large sub- sidy for campus parking. Shoup (2007) notes that, in cases in which parking availability appears to be a challenge, deter- mining appropriate pricing (demand-side construction) rather than quantity of spaces (supply-side construction) is the issue. Where parking is scarce, the privilege of parking is an asset for which some schools have found staff, faculty, and students willing to pay a high price. Parking pricing is a crucial issue for university administra- tors not only for reasons such as faculty and staff recruitment but also because of the very high cost of constructing and maintaining parking (Poinsatte and Toor 1999). Universities can expect to pay between $15,000 and $30,000 per net new parking space constructed on campus, a figure that is inde- pendent of the cost for ongoing operations and maintenance (Toor 2003). Some of the parking management strategies universities can employ (in addition to basic price-increase strategies) are regulatory measures, including parking bans for certain groups such as freshmen or other class years. Others are economic incentives: financial incentives for affiliates to drive less, such as parking cash-outs, or to drive more efficiently, such as preferential/lower-cost carpool and vanpool parking; and transportation demand management measures, such as enhancements to facilities for other modes of travel or subsidy of transit (Poinsatte and Toor 1999; Toor 2003). Livable Campus: Alternative Modes and Environmental Initiatives Institutions of higher education have recently begun to imple- ment increasingly more aggressive strategies for reducing vehicle emissions and enhancing opportunities for campus access by modes other than single-occupant vehicles (SOVs). For example, many campuses have begun to switch to cleaner fuels such as biodiesel, which can be used in existing diesel- burning vehicles (Toor 2003). Other types of alternative fuels as well as hybrid vehicles offer promise. Others have begun to implement campus-owned vehicle programs (for institu- tional use) or car-sharing programs (for all uses, including per- sonal use). These programs act as a way not only to enhance transportation as an end in itself, but also to enhance the campus environment and increase livability, including people who cannot or do not wish to drive.

In addition to providing transit services, a growing number of campuses are now focusing on enhanced infrastructure for pedestrian and bicycle travel. At a growing number of schools, transportation to, from, and around campus is programmed comprehensively with recognition of the benefits of accom- modating different means of access (Poinsatte and Toor 1999). Some schools, such as the University of California at Davis, employ a full-time bicycle and pedestrian coordinator (Balsas 2003). The presence of a dedicated staff person and modal advisory committees, argues Balsas, increases opportunities for consideration during the campus planning process. Enhanced transportation connections may also be viewed as a strategy for goals in addition to an improved immediate campus environment. TCRP Report 22-B profiles the neigh- borhood revitalization effort in Davis Square, Somerville, Massachusetts (near Tufts University) in the 1970s that was based on bringing the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s (MBTA) Red Line through the area rather than through a different routing. Today, Davis Square is a vibrant local commercial center and also a key transit hub for connect- ing Tufts’ shuttle system with other transit services, including MBTA services and a bicycle path. In addition to providing a more direct, speedy connection to downtown Boston for Tufts’ affiliates, the location also serves as a key local activity center 6 with shops, restaurants, and other activities closer to the imme- diate campus vicinity (Project for Public Spaces 2001). This current synthesis addresses and expands on the topics explored in the literature to date. Because U-Passes were cov- ered in depth in the 2001 TCRP synthesis, this report will address a broader range of issues related to partnerships between schools and public agencies. It will also investigate some of the very recent trends in technologies that have shown promise for supporting the critical challenges in transit in college and university communities. ORGANIZATION OF REPORT This report is organized in four topical chapters: Profiles of Surveyed College and University Communities, Campus Oper- ations, Campus Policies and Planning, and Technology and “Green” Innovations. Conclusions about the overall state of the practice in transit and transportation on college and univer- sity campuses are presented in a final chapter. The appendixes include the surveys (Appendixes A and B), a list of survey respondents (Appendix C), survey responses by questions (Appendix D), ridership data (Appendix E), and a school index (Appendix F).

Next: Chapter Two - Profiles of Surveyed College and University Communities »
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TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis 78: Transit Systems in College and University Communities has released a report that explores practices and trends in the areas of campus transit operations, policies, and planning, with a special focus area in technology and environmental innovations. The report also examines innovative partnership strategies used to enhance services for students, faculty, staff, and the surrounding community.

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