Integration of Paratransit and Fixed-Route Transit Services (2008)

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MARKETING With the exception of mandatory feeder services, integrated services have generally been quite proactive in publicizing their services. In Broward County, Florida, individual munic- ipalities conduct their own marketing campaigns for the com- munity bus service in their community. In addition, detailed Community Bus Service information is available on Broward County Transit’s website or through the Customer Service help line. Finally, Community Bus Service is also included in all presentations or public outreach performed by the paratran- sit services staff, further enhancing the goal of shifting trips from paratransit to Community Bus Service where possible. In Asheville, information about the route deviation service is provided in brochures, route maps, and schedules. In San Joaquin County, the Hopper deviated routes are distinguished from regular bus routes through color coding of routes in printed schedules and maps and a unique route numbering system. In Pittsburgh, the local Transportation Management Asso- ciations conduct extensive marketing of the employer shuttles, including on-board paratransit vehicles to attract riders with disabilities. The Elder Express—demand-response service available to seniors and people with disabilities that connects to fixed-route service—has been promoted through extensive public outreach. This includes special free days and partner- ships with local businesses and faith-based communities. To the extent that integrated services also can promote their programs in a manner integrated with the ADA para- transit program, they can be more effective in shifting some rides to the lesser cost alternatives. In the call-n-Ride pro- gram in Denver, if callers to the ADA paratransit call center request a trip that is fully located within one of the 20 call-n- Ride service areas, they are advised that this would be a free option for them. As a result, more than 13,000 ADA para- transit customers are projected to use call-n-Ride in 2008, an increase of almost 200% since 2006; the proportion of ADA eligible riders for February 2008 represented more than 2% of the total call-n-Ride boardings. In addition, Denver RTD has teamed with the local municipalities to advertise the pro- gram through utility bills, schools, libraries, and recreation centers. Another effective means of promoting integrated services is through travel training programs. In Sacramento, where 16 Paratransit Inc. has travel trained more than 9,000 individu- als, publicizing the variety of accessible options available to individuals with disabilities has been a very effective con- tributor to the substantial number of disabled riders on fixed- route service. Mandatory feeder programs generally do not market feeder service, but rather explain in the rider’s brochures that service to those conditionally eligible may require a transfer to fixed- route service. ACCESS in Pittsburgh complements this in- formation by providing details in the eligibility determination letter and in follow-up telephone calls with the registrant, in addition to a one page fact sheet and a personal trip planning service. Pierce Transit sends a DVD to all registrants found conditionally eligible for paratransit service, describing the range of accessible mobility options. TECHNOLOGY Apart from those integrated services that require transfers between modes, generally no specialized technology is nec- essary beyond the conventional scheduling software and Auto- mated Vehicle Locators (AVLs) that have recently come into widespread use in fixed-route and paratransit modes. In some instances, such as the senior-oriented circulator shuttle in San Mateo County, simply the use of a cell phone allows systems to take trip requests in real time and allow for a demand- response component. Technology may play a role in the facil- itation of feeder services, although as is evident in the early years of the Pierce Transit and BC Transit feeder services, it is not necessarily required. Various technology elements that are usually cited in feeder services include scheduling soft- ware that comprises an interface with fixed-route schedules, the use of Mobile Data Terminals (MDTs) and AVLs. In addition, transit agencies emphasize that having radio systems that can switch between paratransit and fixed-route channels can be particularly helpful. Finally, in order to minimize the stress associated with long wait times at bus stops, the use of estimated time of arrival technology can be particularly effec- tive. This is particularly true in transit systems with infrequent service where paratransit drivers do not wait with the passen- ger for the bus. The majority of paratransit programs in North America use three scheduling software applications: the PASS program offered by Trapeze, ADEPT offered by StrataGen (recently CHAPTER FOUR MARKETING AND TECHNOLOGY USED IN INTEGRATED SERVICES

fixed-route alternative as a basis for determining eligi- bility for ADA paratransit service; • By offering a flex or fixed-route solution as a lower cost alternative to paratransit service; and • By offering flex or fixed-route service as part of a multi- modal (e.g., feeder) solution in which a trip request is fulfilled through some combination of fixed, flex, and paratransit service linked by transfers at designated transfer points. When using PASS for integrated service, the transit agency also must use Trapeze’s fixed-route scheduling package to allow for the easy importing of fixed-route itineraries into the paratransit scheduling function. While this enhancement to the regular scheduling software only has been requested by a handful of agencies, even these largely have not used this function. The primary cause given by a software company representative is that policy makers and managers at these agencies may be unwilling to take the political heat of offering a paratransit ride that does not deliver the rider to their desti- nation. However, given the increased demand for functions that make trip eligibility screening feasible, it is possible that the trend toward applying eligibility conditions will encour- age use of feeder service in the future. RouteMatch TS is another paratransit scheduling and rout- ing application that enables integration between demand- response and fixed-route services. According to the vendor, the fixed-route display module allows the provider to visually see its fixed-routes, bus stops, time points, and display the 3/4 mile boundaries from bus stops. The user also is able to determine which customers are located within the ADA para- transit boundaries. By combining the fixed-route display module and associated ADA GeoSpatial features, the reser- vations agent or scheduler can conduct trip by trip deter- minations based on the customer’s eligibility conditions. In addition, accessibility information about individual bus stops that can be used by the reservationist as part of the trip booking process can be provided through the Bus Stop Data Model. The Inter-Modal Trip Planner module available through ADEPT performs similar functions to the paratransit/ fixed-route interface described in the other two software applications. For other integrated services, survey respondents described additional uses of technology. In Whatcom County’s circula- tor service, WTA used the mapping platform in their former system (MIDAS-PT/TransCad) and their current system (Trapeze PASS/ARCView) to manage service conditions, such as days and hours of service, service area boundaries, and connections to fixed-route and paratransit. Some agencies in rural or mountainous areas indicated that they are unable to use AVL/MDTs because of restrictions on communications. 17 purchased by Digital Dispatch Systems, Inc.), and Route- Match TS, which tends to be used by smaller and medium sized systems. In Pittsburgh and Tacoma until fairly recently (pre-2005), the paratransit programs routinely conducted trip eligibility screening without the use of technology, which frequently re- sulted in feeder trips. In Tacoma this was achieved as follows: When a rider designated as 3b (feeder) eligible requests a SHUTTLE trip, the call taker checks on a map to see if the dis- tance from the rider’s trip origin to the nearest transit center is less than to the rider’s destination. If it is, and the trip is a repeat trip, then it is entered as a feeder trip in the daily trip schedule immediately. The trip reader then . . . refers to a binder with var- ious trip plans to determine . . . how a feeder trip can be arranged and calls the rider back with a trip plan. This manual approach, in which the reservationist relied entirely on maps, binders with trip information, and pho- tographs from environmental assessments, generated roughly 600 feeder trips per month. Since the system purchased new scheduling software, the trip screening process has become more automated, but not entirely so. Pierce Transit elected not to purchase the Inter-Modal Trip Planner module that is available through the ADEPT software application, so indi- vidual trip plans are entered manually by the eligibility staff and viewed separately from the trip booking process by the reservationists. In the detailed analysis of BC Transit’s feeder service pro- vided in the TCRP study, “all the schedulers who were inter- viewed agreed that, for two-legged trips, feeder trips required no more telephone scheduling time than direct paratransit trips (this could be due to the short fixed-route headways that precluded the need for coordination between modes). As for the three-legged trips, involving both a feeder and distribution leg on paratransit, these typically involve two different para- transit operators, and most of the operators require the riders to make arrangements with both operators. One paratransit oper- ator that does coordinate with the other paratransit operator estimated that coordination with the other operator adds five to 10 minutes to the scheduler’s time for a three-legged trip.” While these examples indicate that conducting trip screen- ing to arrange feeder trips can be accomplished without the use of technology, the current trend is certainly toward the use of increased technology. Trapeze’s PASS scheduling software package provides a Coordinated Transportation module with two components relevant to this synthesis: a) multi-modal and b) feeder. This application can integrate fixed, flex, and paratransit service in the following ways: • By performing behind-the-scenes fixed-route itinerary planning to determine the specifics of any available