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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Page 48
Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Page 49
Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Page 51
Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Suggested Citation:"3. Key Research Findings." Transportation Research Board. 1998. Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Human Costs of Personal Immobility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9438.
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Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

3. E[E:Y RESEARCH FINDINGS Public transportation plays a significant role in providing mobility to the transportation disadvantaged. While most Americans drive an automobile, people who are young, old, poor or disabled often rely on public transportation as their lifeline. The title of this research, "Using Public Transportation to Reduce the Economic, Social and Herman Costs of Personal Immobility," presupposes that public transportation will exist. However, in these days of declining funds, it is important to recognize the fundamental premise of availability which underpins .. . . .. ~ .. ~ . . . . . ~ .. ~ .. . . . .. this research; therefore, the first and most ObVlOUS mining ot this research IS that public transportation must be available if it is to be used to address immobility. This, and the other seven findings of the research, are summarized below, followed by a discussion of each of the points based upon the literature review, stakeholder interviews, case studies, and economic analyses of the i! practices investigated. SUMMARY OF E~:Y FINDINGS I. Retaining basic public transportation services is critical to improving the mobility of the transportation disadvantaged. 2. Public transportation practices directed at reducing personal immobility are economically beneficial. Public transportation agencies that are able to develop new alliances with nontraditional partners will have the best results with transportation practices addressing welfare-to-work, employment and health care. Opportunities exist for blending a wide array of different Herman and monetary resources to address immobility. Public transportation practices bundled with other support services most effectively address immobility issues related to welfare-to-work, employment, and health care. 6. Public transportation agencies can provide leadership in economic development, thereby reducing the costs of immobility. 7. Today's mobility issues, particularly in access to jobs, demand regional approaches. 8. Simple ideas and programs can yield significant mobility improvements. I. Retaining basic public transportation services is critical to improving the mobility of the transportation disadvantaged. One danger in addressing specific mobility problems such as services to meet welfare reform or provide access to health care-is the temptation to focus on the immediate transportation need without considering the health of the basic 3-!

system. For example, in the recent transformation of welfare to workfare, there was an assumption on the part of many state and local governments that public transportation was available to meet the new demands. The absence of a transportation discussion in the federal welfare bill and the lack of specific dollars for transportation support services is evidence of this assumption. However, government officials learned what transit operators had been trying to tell them for years that funding reductions had taken their toll on what public transit could deliver in many systems around the country. The AC Transit case study on service reductions is strong confirmation that these cutbacks hurt the very population that the government is now trying to help into the job market. AC Transit was forced bY budget shortfalls from reduced state and federal funds to cut 1,000 weekday platform equivalent hours, thereby saving $4.8 million. However, a survey conducted during the AC Transit study revealed that 7.4% of the riders lost $2.2 million in job income as a result of the cuts, and 4.2% were continuing to lose income one year later because they had not found other employment, amounting to an additional $8.5 million a year. The total annual costs to the community from the service reductions were $48.1 million. Over a year after the reductions were implemented, the District responded to residents in an isolated pocket of its service area by adding back hourly service from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. Of the approximately 3,000 people living in the area, more than half were on public assistance and did not have access to a car. To help residents travel to jobs with evening or night hours, a set-aside in the budget for experimental programs was used to fund approximately seven months of service. The District is pursuing new welfare-to-work funds through the county Department of Social Services and private funding from employers served by the route in order to continue the route in the new fiscal year. External funding will also be needed to respond to similar pleas from other constituencies, according to the Manager of Service Development. The results of the AC Transit case study demonstrate the importance of fixed-route service to the community and the impact when it is reduced. Urban bus service is enormously productive, and its curtailment even in low- patronage, off-peak hours can create added travel costs and income losses that exceed by several times the dollar savings to transit agencies from the service reductions. The case studies in this research are replete with examples of customized services that are dependent on the existence of a strong core system-one that operates 20-24 hours a day, seven days a week. The system must provide reliable service over a span of hours and days that meet the needs of the local economy. For example: 3-2

. SEPTA's Horsham Breeze route to a suburban business park is an extension of reverse commute bus routes and rail service from the central city. The shuttle runs six days a week from 6:12 a.m. to 11 p.m. and meets two daily, 21-hour per day mainline routes. · MDTA's Medicaid Metropass Program could not exist if basic service levels were not available to meet the needs of Medicaid patients. MTA's Immediate Needs Transportation Program is able to grow and serve more people because of its increasing use of bus tokens. If basic bus service were not available at the days and hours needed, the program would not be attractive to the 600 participating social service agencies. About 48% of MTA's Blue :Line TeleVillage users arrive by transit. The availability of transit services helps create this "virtual" mobility. · The private entrepreneur who operates the Numero Uno Supermarket Shuttle relies on transit access from MTA lines to bring his customers to the store. The Marion County Department of Social Services worked with PDRTA to expand an existing route into a 24-hour service in order to link welfare recipients with entry-level jobs. The heart of the concept for the Fruilvale BART Transit Village is its location at a hub well-served by public transportation. The City of Fremont's Travel Training Program increases mobility for the elderly and persons with disabilities by training them to ride a fixed-route system that already exists. This finding, retaining basic public transportation services is critical to improving the mobility of the transportation disadvantaged is listed first because the research term believes it the most important. Investment in a basic level of transit services will have the broadest impact on reducing personal immobility for the transportation dependent. 2. Public transportation practices directed at reducing personal immobility are economically beneficial. Society benefits when individuals can access more parts of society. The programs in these case studies save society money by helping to: 3-3

avoid medical institutionalization of the indigent; prevent crime by providing job training for employment and food for the hungry; reduce the demand on more expensive and oversubscribed paratransit services; provide an option to a costly ambulance ride for medical care; · increase the purchasing power enjoyed by transit riders with access to jobs or to broader market choices; and relieve other agencies funded by tax dollars of transportation responsibilities and' thereby increase their productivity. Although these benefits are not easily quantified, they should not be overlooked. If transit agencies could incorporate them into new measures for evaluation, transit's true value to society would be startlingly apparent. In order to quantify the benefits of these programs in more traditional terms, an economic analysis was performed for seven of the eleven transportation practices studied. Four of these involved surveys developed by the research team, and the other three were based on data gathered from the transportation organization. The results show a high ratio of benefits to costs, supporting the finding that public transportation practices directed at reducing personal immobility are economically beneficial Below is a table summarizing the results of the economic analyses. Net Benefit/ Annual Annual Cost Net Annual Case StudyBenefits Costs Ratio (a/b) Benefits (a-b) l a b cd Completed Analvses PDRTA,Myrtle Beach $2,176,570 $79,430 27.4$2,097,140 SEPTAHorsham Breeze 1,563,361 213,192 7.31,350,169 MDTAMetropass 7,619,000 1,580,000 4.86,039,000 MTAImmediate Needs 13,951,000 5,400,000 2.68,551,000 OATS, Missouri 13,939,330 6,009,825 2.37,929,505 Fremonttraveltraining 52,150 26,956 1.925,194 AC Transit service cuts 4,759,000 48,100,000 0.1-43,341,000 3-4

As can be seen by the benef~t/cost ratio, SEPTA's Horsham Breeze Shuttle has a very high rate of return. For every $! invested in this reverse commute service, there is a benefit of $7.30. Even more astonishing is PDRTA's benefit/cost ratio of 27.4, made possible because PDRTA has so successfully minimized its out- of-pocket costs through fares and employer contributions. Transit's role in helping control health care costs is illustrated by MDTA's Metropass program, which saves over $6 million a year in federal and state Medicaid dollars. In the case of Immediate Needs, for the annual $5.4 million invested by MTA, there is a positive economic benefit in the community of almost $14 million and a benefit/cost ratio of 2.6. Not surprisingly, service cuts have a negative effect on the community. When AC Transit cut i,000 weekday platform equivalent hours, the annual economic losses to AC Transit riders were more than $48 million, compared with only $4.S million in annual savings to AC Transit. . Chapter 4 provides guidelines for conducting the type of economic analysis on which these findings are based. Public transportation agencies that are able to develop new alliances with nontraditional partners will have the best results with transportation practices addressing welfare-to~work, employment and health care. The transit industry has been in partnership with state and federal governments over the years to fund transportation services. However, almost all the operations spotlighted in the case studies were new services developed with nontraditional partners, such as: · . ~ socla. . service agencies community-based organizations volunteer groups businesses, and local governments. Illustrations of these nontraditional partners can be highlighted from the case studies. For example, PDRTA works hand-in-glove with the Department of Social Services (DSS) to provide service to entry-level jobs for people transitioning off welfare, and MDTA introduced its Metropass program with the full involvement of the regional Medicare administrator. One element of both these successful working relationships is a vested interest shared by both parties. For example, the Medicaid Program Administrator in Miami had an interest in reducing the transportation costs for her program; MDTA had an interest in avoiding additional ADA paratransit trips that would have been required if Medicaid had stopped taking responsibility for these same trips. The Metropass 3-5

was born from these shared vested interests. Medicaid was also willing to share control over its clients and database to make the program succeed. A prime example of a willingness to share control is OATS, where volunteers prepare monthly schedules, promote ridership, and raise matching funds. The outcome is a sense of ownership among the County Committee members, who donate 76,000 hours worth $624,000 per year to the success of the operation. The MTA and BART case studies represent other examples of willingness to share control with nontraditional partners. MTA provides general oversight and policy direction to the Immecliate Needs Transportation Program, which is entirely run by two community-based organizations, First African Methodist Episcopal (FAME) Renaissance program any the International Institute of Los Angeles (~lLA). Similarly, BART has been willing to share control by relinquishing the lead on development around one of its stations to the Spanish Speaking Unity Council. Like FAME and IILA, the Unity Council is another community-based organization with a history of respect and competency among residents and other institutions. Fundamental to shared control is a climate of trust between the transit agencies and their partners. OATS trusts its volunteers with key functions of the service, and BART and MTA have a corresponding trust with their community- based partners. In Chesterfield County, South Carolina, building trust was one of the most important functions of the first two years of the Coordinating Council, according to the participants. Their director cites "a significant increase in cooperation of staff at the direct service level" as a result of the time they spent building trust. Another issue the Chesterfield County Coordinating Council had to address was forming a consensus on a common agenda. Although the members agreed with . ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ ~ ~ ~ · 1 · ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ _ ~ _ _ _ _ 1_ _ ~ ~ ·__ ~ the goal of coordination, they were reluctant to take the steps to mane coormnat~on happen. Only when they were able to agree that sharing each agency's resources was their best path to coordination were they able to overcome their parochial concerns. In contrast, BART and the Unity Council share the common goal of economic development at the Fru~tvale BART station, a goal which serves both the immediate constituency around the station and BART's broader mission of diversifying revenues and increasing ridership. The nartnershin between PDRTA ~_` ~ ~ . ~. . . ~ ,, and ~ works so well because ot tne~r~o~nt agenda to provide transportation to jobs. A key ingredient in a successful partnership is the ability to listen to the partner's needs and respond flexibly. SEPTA's ability to address the employment needs of private sector partners, such as United Parcel Services and Prudential, created a win-win opportunity for all parties. The small vehicles and flexible funding package SEPTA offered to create the Horsham Breeze shuttle 3-6

responded to the image the business park tenants wanted and the share of the service for which they were willing to pay. The resulting partnership realizes economies of scale that would not be possible with a single public or private entity working alone. Local governments can also make good partners for a transit agency. For example, MTA has located the management of the Blue Line TeleVillage with the City of Compton and plans to form similar partnerships with the cities of El Monte and Inglewood to generate the community buy-in that is necessary for the long-term funding and usage of other televillages. AC Transit and BAR T funded a partnership with the City of Fremont to conduct peer travel training for ADA- elig~ble seniors and persons with disabilities. The travel training case study illustrates another element of a successful partnership: an action orientation with scheduled, short-term results. Every rider trained in the s~x-session course who takes a fixed-route trip instead of a paratransit trip saves the transit agencies $25. Riders themselves save $1.90 per trip. Thus, the savings from the training not only occurred immediately but continues over the long run. In Miami, MDTA and the Medicare Program Administrator also adopted an action agenda, by challenging the status quo. The excellent, short-term results from their pilot program with 126 people have snowballed to 3,600 people, saving Medicaid $503,000 a month and MDTA a potential $10 million a year. Important elements of agreements with nontraditional partners, as illustrated above by the case studies, can be summarized as follows: a vested interest shared by all parties; a willingness to share control; a climate of trust; consensus on a common agenda; an ability to listen to the partner's needs and respond flexibly; and an action orientation with scheduled, short-term results. Dramatic changes are occurring in the delivery of health care and reform of the welfare system that directly impact transit properties. These case studies identif y transit operators that are ahead of the curve in meeting these societal and political shifts in priorities. By designing services in conjunction with their nontraditional partners, they have been able to respond effectively to these external influences and meet the needs of the transportation disadvantaged. 3-7

4. Opportunities exist for blending a wide array of different human and monetary resources to address immobility. This finding is a byproduct of the partnerships discussed in the previous item. These partnerships have expanded transit's resources by providing new funding sources or alternative methods of administering services. The result has been additional services that increase mobility for the transportation disadvantaged. Two agencies studied particularly stand out for their creative packaging of funds: OATS and the Spanish Speaking Unity Council, which is leading the Fruitvale BART Transit Village development. Below is a list of the wide range of funding sources that have been garnered in support of their transit projects: OATS REVENUE BUDGET FRUIlrVALE BART TRANSIT VILLAGE Federal Highway Administration Federal Transit Administration City of Oakland Community Development Block Grant Special Billings/Contracts (24.~%) Cities and counties Medical centers and HMOs Dialysis clinics Retirement housing Universities Chamber of commerce Local school districts Social service agencies Medicaid transportation Rider Contributions (5.7%) Group Travel (2.~%) Local Cash (2.~%) Non-Transit Resource (0.3%) Missouri Dept. of Mental Health (3.2%) Missouri Elderly and Handicapped Transportation Assistance Program (0.4%) U.S. Area Agency on Aging (40.6%) U.S. Dept. of Transportation (20.2%) City of Oakland bond measure U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development U.S. Environmental Protection Agency City of Oakland Enhanced Enterprise Community Fund City of Oakland redevelopment funds Alameda Co. Congestion Management Agency U.S. Dept. of Commerce Ford Foundation Hewlitt Foundation I=oans and lines of credit 3-S

Add to this list the additional funding sources *om partnerships that have been developed by other case study agencies: businesses and the county (SEPTA); the state Department of Social Services (PDRTA and CCCC); other contracts, such as Amtrak (PDRTA); the school district (CCCC); and Medicare (MDTA). Besides direct funding, transit agencies can leverage their own funds by tapping human resources available *om partners. Volunteers donate 76,000 hours valued at $623,00 a year to OATS budget. The 600 social service agencies that participate in MTA's Immediate Needs Transportation Program provide an in-kind contribution by helping MTA fulfill its mission of increasing mobility for Los Angeles County residents. 5. Public transportation practices bundled with other support services most effectively address immobility issues related to welfare-to-work, employment, and health care. Chapter 2 discussed the characteristics of the transportation disadvantaged and previous public policies that attempted to address immobility. One conclusion that can be drawn is that immobility is an indicator of other social issues that typically cannot be addressed by transportation alone. This research uncovered a number of examples of how transportation agencies have worked with others to bundle services. Here again, these practices are an outgrowth of elective partnerships. Bridges to Work is one of the most systematically organized programs. The design is based on collaborative planning with job training and placement organizations, transportation providers, community-based organizations, human services agencies, and regional planning institutions. The program, which is being tested in Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee, and St. Louis, consists of: Metropolitan Placement to help inner-city residents locate job openings, particularly in the suburbs; Targetec] Commute to connect inner-city residents to previously inaccessible employment locations; and Support Services to mitigate demands created by a commute to distant job locations, including extended child-care arrangements, a guaranteed ride home in an emergency, and conflict resolution with co-workers. Similarly, most of the case studies validate this emphasis on support services that are packaged with transportation. For example: 3-9

. The City of Fremont's Travel Training Program recognizes that persons who are elderly or disabled may need the support of peer training to develop the confidence to ride AC Transit and BART fixed routes. The Department of Social Services in Marion County, South Carolina includes PDRTA's rural commute routes with other assistance it offers to Family Independence Act recipients, along with job placement, family living skills classes, child care subsidies, and post-placement counseling. The Chesterfield County Coordinating Council and the MTA Immediate Needs Transportation Program have at their heart the integration of transportation and social services to address human needs holistically. Recognition of the importance of support services extends to other aspects of economic development and welfare-to-work programs. The federal government, for example, instituted the Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Communities initiative in 1994, an economic development program which is also designed to address social problems, including immobility. Besides over $l billion in funds, the selected communities are eligible for other supporting programs, such as tax-exempt facility ~ ~ ~ ~ · ~ ~ · 1 ~ dA' 1 · ~ · 1 nones, employer wage crewcuts, certain tax cteouct~ons, anct assistance in overcoming regulatory barriers. This program recognizes that a strategic vision for change ... . . ~.. must encompass multiple aspects or a community such as economic opportunit',r, · ~1 ~ , . sustainable Development, community-based partnerships, and stimuli for private sector investments. Transportation is a mandatory component in each comm~,nity~s strategic plan. In the area of welfare reform, the South Carolina Department of Social Services (DSS) is an example of a comprehensive approach which includes both assistance to the client, as described in the paragraph above on Marion County, and incentives for the employer. These incentives include: (34) Work Experience Program, an unsalaried, apprenticeship program that allows employers to observe and train prospective employees at no cost; Work Supplementation Program, which allows employers to hire interns at minimum wage and be reimbursed at $~.10 per hour; Family Independence Employer Tax Credit equal to 20% of the eligible employee's wages per month for the first year ant} declining to 10% by the third year; New Jobs Tax Credit of $1,500 to $4,500 per job per year for up to five years; dote Development Training Fee equal to 2-5% of a new employee's state withholding taxes for 15 years, which can be used for transportation as well as training, training facilities, real estate, infrastructure or to meet environmental regulations; and 3-10

Job Retraining Fee, a retention of up to $500 in state withholding taxes for each production employee to be retrained for a maximum of $2~000 per employee over five years. The Enterprise Communities initiative and the South Carolina DSS program are cited to illustrate how current thinking places importance on an inclusive approach to addressing societal problems. In their book, Auto, Transit, and Cities, d.R. Meyer and d.A. Gomez-Ibanez explain the failure of early reverse commute programs: "When compared with racial discrimination or lack of skills and education, employment decentralization and inadequate or expensive public transportation appeared to be relatively minor causes of unemployment (or underemployment) among low income central city residents."~35) In other words, although transportation is an essential component in solving immobility, it will not resolve the problem in and of itself, because the origins of immobility are entangled in demographic, geographic and cultural causes as well. Transit staffs need a new set of skills and knowledge to integrate these socio- economic factors into their service planning and delivery. By bundling transportation solutions with packages of support services, public transportation providers will attack the problem more comprehensively, with a higher likelihood of success. 6. Public transportation agencies can provide leadership in economic development' thereby reducing the costs of immobility. The suburbanization of jobs has followed the suburbanization of residences. As of 1990, the suburbs account for 60% of the metropolitan work force. Today, just one-quarter of the American people live in central cities, and the largest proportion of people half the population-live, work, and shop in urban areas outside the central city.(36) At the same time, poverty and disadvantage are concentrated in the former central cities.~37) Transit agencies have responded with operational improvements designed to address this jobs/housing mismatch. The two reverse commute routes studied for this research are good examples. PDRTA takes employees from rural South Carolina to jobs in the tourist industry at Myrtle Beach, a commute of one to two hours. Although International Paper is building 50,000 homes near Myrtle Beach, prices are out of the range of these riders, necessitating this continuing commute for entry-level workers. SEPTA's Horsham Breeze allows employees to transfer from main line routes originating in Philadelphia to a shuttle route looping around a job- rich suburban business park. The average commute is one hour and 28 minutes one 3-~l

way. Prudential's decision to locate its telephone center in a suburban business park instead of downtown Philadelphia is illustrative of the suburbanization of jobs, the cause behind the mismatch of potential employees with job locations. What the long-term prospects for these routes will be cannot be known at this time. Will workers become discouraged by such long bus commutes and purchase an automobile as soon as possible? Auto ownership may become more feasible when .. . . . . ~ ..' these employees nave work experience which allows them to advance to nigher- paying jobs. Whatever ill effects may occur for transit ridership or road congestion, auto ownership under today's land use patterns will definitely increase the personal mobility of these workers. Thus, the reverse commutes will have given these employees an opportunity for entry into the personal mobility enjoyed by most Americans. On the other hand, increased auto ownership by these current employees may not affect the viability of the reverse commute routes if the experience of United Parcel Service (UPS) in Horsham Township is any evidence. UPS has an extremely high employee turnover rate and is constantly recruiting new applicants, who will need the bus service. Burner King in Myrtle Beach has jobs that no ~<> - ~i ~ begging, and is willing to subsidize the PDRTA routes to enlarge its labor pool. Even ass~...ing a change in current land use policies occurs, the jobs/housing imbalance cannot be corrected in anything but a long time frame. Therefore, it is likely that such operational strategies as those implemented by PDRTA and SEPTA will continue to be needed for economic development as long as the economy remains strong. Two California transit agencies spotlighted in these cases studies are involved in long-term land use changes that can have a more permanent impact on economic development. The Fruilvale BART Transit Village is being built at a rail station. Its central feature will be a large pedestrian plaza surrounded by small retail uses, multi-family dwellings, and public services. The design responds to immobility by moving the services to the people who need them and clustering the development around a transit hub. SimilarlY. MTA's Blue Line TeleVilla~e moves · . . ~ ~ ~ . ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ services to tne people, DUt tnrougn tecnno~og~Y. Located at the City of Compton's transit hub, the TeleViliage allows residents and employees to access many services electronically, without the need to travel. Both of these case studies are examples of transit as part of a larger economic development strategy. A 1996 TCRP report entitled Transit and Urban Form discusses the relationship between mobility and economic development: "Reduction in accessibility and service quality accelerates the economic decline of city neighborhoods and business districts." The report goes on to list characteristics of regions with successful transit-oriented development, including these characteristics related to economic development: 3-12 .

regional growth that channels development to station areas; transit stations located in areas where the market supports development; regional policies that focus growth in transit corridors and limit it elsewhere; station-area policies and programs to support private sector investments and transit-friendly development; and long-term commitment. (38) Public transportation can have an important role in economic development, both through operational improvements and through land use strategies. However, it cannot substitute for sound land use decisions. 7. Today's mobility issues, particularly in access to jobs, Reman regional approaches. Another outgrowth of the jobs/housing mismatch discussed above is the need for transit agencies to enlarge the sphere of influence used in their planning, perhaps even beyond their own service areas. This need surfaced during interviews with staff at the Employment Development Department (EDD) conducted in the AC Transit case study. EDD representatives indicated that 67% of their caseload of people looking for jobs live in Oakland, which lacks enough jobs to meet the caseload's demand. The jobs are in the southern portion of the county and adjacent counties, which are very poorly connected by public transportation to Oakland. In Chesterfield County, South Carolina the same type of problem was identified for access to health care. Only one of the five hospitals that patients need to go to is in the county. Nationally, only 6% of welfare recipients have cars.~39) Yet, most new job growth is occurring in the suburbs, largely inaccessible by public transportation. Clearly, the nation cannot rely on transit alone to solve this piece of welfare refocus. It will take a great deal of collaboration on the part of governments, businesses, non-profit agencies, churches, metropolitan planning organizations, and other leading institutions to help knit together a plan that addresses immobility across jurisdictional and institutional boundaries. The case study on the Chesterfield County Coordinating Council (CCCC) shows how difficult this coordination can be, even in a small rural area. Before coordination could be undertaken, CCCC members had to confront turf battles, dissolve resentment between agencies, and build trust and rapport. The barriers to coordination were similar to those found in other recent TCRP studies conducted by Crain & Associates(40) and in the literature search for this research. Some of the underlying issues hindering regionalism include: 3-13

lack of understanding about other institutions' goals and services; reluctance to share scarce resources for fear that the agency~s own programs will suffer; worry that the bigger or more powerful agencies will overpower the desires of the smaller or less powerful agencies; suspicion that revealing costs will reflect unfavorably without taking into account basic differences among the agencies; inability to change inhibiting federal, state and local regulations; concern about inappropriate measures of success applied to nontraditional services; fear of job loss; competition for funding, prestige, control, any personal recognition; and pressure in the political environment to promote local interests over regional goals. Clearly, society should not expect quick fixes leading to regionalism that can overcome decades of separateness and autonomy. Yet, despite these barriers. there ~. ~. ~ . are examples of agencies moving torwarct across regional Ames with coordinated services. Oftentimes, the regional approach is part of a larger corporate strategy of mobility management. MTA's Immediate Needs Transportation Program, using taxis as well as buses, serves facilities in all of Taos Angeles County, even though other fixed-route operators exist in some of the outlying cities. MTA program staff expect that Immediate Needs will become part of a three-tiered strategy in the agency's Long Range Transit Plan. High frequency, high capacity buses would comprise tier one; 40-foot buses along fixed lines with flexible routing in the neighborhoods would comprise tier two; tier three would be a community-based network, including point deviation routes, late night taxi service, Immediate Needs, and the currently contracted Americans with Disabilities Act program. The program would become part of a portfolio of services available to the nine million people of Los Angeles County. Similarly, PDRTA and OATS, serving 11 and 87 counties respectively, look at the various components of their services as pieces of a corporate vision embracing mobility as a goal. In discussing its rural commute services, PDRTA states, "PDRTA is accepting the critical responsibility of providing the coordinated, efficient, and specialized transportation network which will allow these people to have access to job opportunities."~41 ~ The fact that PDRTA crosses into the service area of another operator in order to bring its residents to jobs in Myrtle Beach demonstrates that transit connections between residential areas and workers earl be designed regionally instead of locally. And OATS' mission is to "provide reliable transportation for transportation disadvantaged Missourians so they can live independently in their own communities."~42) Both these statements exhibit the 3-14

core institutional state of mind that looks for opportunities, the characteristic of a mobility management agency. The Job Oasis Worker Mobility Project in Chicago is a multi-agency partnership that not only coordinates transportation within a region but also coorcizr~ates services across disciplines. Managed by the nonprofit Suburban JobLink, Inc., it provides a mix of fixed-route, subscription and vanpoo] services for unemployed and inner-city residents on Chicago's West Side to jobs in suburban industrial parks around O'Hare Airport. Support services include job placement and job retention services, referrals to child care, and a guaranteed ride home program. Partners include the PACE Suburban Bus Company and key Chicago and county employment and training councils. County lines and transit service area boundaries are artificial barriers for people who need to cross them to get to the jobs and services they need. The same tailored approaches described above for job-access transportation are also necessary for the design of transportation to regional services, such as hospitals and clinics, food banks, and crisis centers. Given the patterns of land use and demography that now exist in the United States, regional approaches are essential to address the economic, social, and Herman costs of immobility. S. Simple ideas and programs can yield significant mobility improvements. Many of the programs studied in this research began with simple ideas which have yielded significant results: OATS is a shoestring operation that makes things happen through extensive use of volunteers and creative blending of a wide variety of funding sources. MDTA designed the Metropass as a pragmatic approach for transporting Medicare clients who are able to ride fixed-route transit. MTA provides oversight to the Immediate Needs Transportation Program, run by community-based organizations with a wide network of social service agencies, and based on existing taxi and bus services. The City of Fremont's Travel Training Program teaches persons who are elderly or disabled to ride fixed-route transit through the use of peers. The CCCC created a new fixed route system in rural South Carolina by layering it onto existing dial-a-ride services. Bus stops for the general public are designated along dial-a-ride routes that are consistent, such as from a board- and-care home to a sheltered workshop. Including these simple, independent programs into the overall strategy of a company will reinforce the mobility management ethos of the organizations, which 3-15

emphasizes moving people rather than the mode of transportation. Including them can also be more effective than considering them as adjuncts to the agency's mission, by assuring the programs greater funding security and integration within the organization. None of these programs are elaborate concepts; none required costly capital investments. Yet, as Finding 2 illustrates, the net annual benefits range from thousands to millions of dollars. The following chapter is a Methodologies Guide. It discusses how these n~nbers were derived and describes the steps to perform an economic analysis of transit projects. . 3-16

CHAPTER REFERENCES (34) "Working Together & Building Better Lives," DSS Brochure 12112 (Nov 96) The South Carolina Department of Social Services. (35) Meyer, d.R. and Gomez-Ibanez, d.A., Auto, Transit, ant] Cities. A Twentieth Century Fund Report, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (1981) p. 231. (36) Cox, W. "The Livable American City, Toward an Environmentally Friendly American Dream," The State Factor, American Legislative Exchange Council, Vol. 19, No. 3 (August 19931. (37) Hughes, Mark, Over the Horizon: Jobs in the Suburbs of Major Metropolitan Areas, Report to Public/Private Ventures (December 19931. (38) Transit and Urban Form, TCRP Report 16, Transportation Research Board Washington, D.C. (19961. (39) "Welfare-to-Work: Mosaic of Services Helping Link People and Employment," Commuter Connections, Vol. 6, Issue 3, Third Quarter 1997, MetroPool, StamforcI, Connecticut. (40) See TCRP Report 14, Crain & Associates, Inc., "Institutional Barriers to Intermodal Transportation Policies and Planning in Metropolitan Areas" (19961; TCRP Report 21, Crain & Associates, Inc., "Strategies to Assist Local Transportation Agencies in Becoming Mobility Managers," (199~31. (41) Pee Dee Regional Transportation Authority Five Year Capitalization Project (April, 19971. (42) OATS, Inc., 1996 Annual Report, Colombia, Missouri (19971. 3-17

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