Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

Comparing Two Common Approaches To Public Transit Service Equity Evaluation, Alex Karner, Aaron Golub

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Publications and Presentations

Understanding the equity effects of transit service changes requires good information about the demographics of transit ridership. Both on-board survey data and census data can be used to estimate equity effects, though there is no clear reason these two sources will result in the same finding of impact. Guidance from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) recommends using either of these data sources to estimate equity impacts. This article makes a direct comparison of the two methods for the public transit system in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area. The results indicate that, although both sources are acceptable for FTA compliance, the …

Evaluating The Planning And Implementation Of Major Transit Capital Projects In The Portland Region, Joseph Recker

PSU Transportation Seminars

The Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) discretionary New Starts program is the federal government's largest discretionary funding program. From heavy to light rail, from commuter rail to bus rapid transit systems, the FTA's New Starts program has helped to make possible hundreds of new or extended transit fixed guideway systems across the country, including most of TriMet’s light rail extensions and WES commuter rail. Beginning in 2001, FTA has required project sponsors to prepare a Before and After Study report on the effectiveness of planning and implementation of New Starts and Small Starts projects. The studies focus on five transit characteristics …

Capturing The Ride: Exploring Low-Density Flexible Transit Alternatives In Salem-Keizer, Darwin Moosavi

PSU Transportation Seminars

Current fixed-route transit service provided by Salem-Keizer Transit is inefficient in the low-density neighborhoods of West Salem, South Salem, and Keizer. The lack of sidewalks, non-gridded circuitous streets, and large single-family residential lots all contribute to a lack of ridership. As a result, traditional fixed-route transit service is not cost-effective in these areas. Through a five month planning process, a group of Portland State University graduate students, better known as Paradigm Planning, tackled the task of addressing this problem in each of the three study areas. Paradigm’s planning process explored mode and route options in order to produce a plan …

The "Kiddie Cab" Industry Transformation In The 21st Century, Jason Wachs

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

A new niche business has increased in the United States from a handful of private van services in 1992 to almost 250 nationwide. Referred to by many as "kiddie cabs," these private business are more than buses, iii that, they will chauffeur children to after school activities, the dentist, school, and anywhere else that children need to go.

The Kiddie Cab industry must explicitly be separated from publicly owned and operated transportation services for children such as paratransit services, shuttles for specific programs such as the YMCA, and any other transportation services for children that are currently funded and operated …

The Contribution Of Manager And Organizational Characteristics To Transit Agency Performance: A National Study Of United States Transit Providers, Charles White, Sheldon Edner

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

The primary objective of the report is to relate attitudinal and demographic characteristics of transit management personnel and agency institutional characteristics to agency performance. The purpose of this analysis is to determine the relative contributions of manager and institutional characteristics as explanatory factors in transit agency performance. The study is based upon the responses of 1033 managers from 134 agencies representing the full range of agency size, institutional, and locational characteristics.

Across six basic performance measures (coat efficiency, labor efficiency, service effectiveness, maintenance efficiency (measured in two different ways) and vehicle efficiency) used here, manager characteristics and attitudes do not …

Application Of Transportation Economics To The Evaluation Of Urban Transit Service, Robert Cervero, Douglass Lee, Anthony M. Rufolo

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This presentation outline was prepared for use in a Workshop on Application of Transportation Economics to the Evaluation of Urban Transit Service held in Portland, OR, August 4-5, 1986. The outline is intended to facilitate replication of the Workshop in other locations, either with the same or different instructors. The outline is not designed to serve as a selfpaced instruction manual, however. Experienced economists with considerable knowledge and experience in transportation are necessry.

The purpose of workshops supported with this presentation outline is to provide transit professionals with the basiceconomic concepts needed to evaluate the impact of a change in …

Understanding The Dynamics Of Innovation In Urban Transit, Sy Adler

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Urban transit is the major United States example of a private industry that failed and was taken over by the public sector. The recent re-emergence of the private sector in urban transit, and private sector-like behavior in the public sector, raise a number of interesting theoretical and historical issues and policy questions. This report develops a conceptual model to explain this recent history and outlines likely paths of transit service and institutional innovation. The model has three components: 1) the political and economic roles of urban transport facilities in the land development process; 2) the nature of the political process …

Transit Agency Characteristics: An Industry Profile, Charles R. White, Sheldon Edner, Kathi Arlene Ketcheson

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This study reports on a survey sent to 493 transit agencies in 1983. The survey instrument requested information concerning agency institutional type, operating characteristics, service area population, employment, management pool, finances and recruitment problems for the period 1979-1983. Surveys were returned by 207 agencies, 171 of which were accompanied by organization charts. The purpose of the survey was to solicit institutional information concerning agency structure to serve as background information for a subsequent study of respondent agency managers.

The study results describe a managerial context that si extremely diverse across agency characteristics, change in attributes and organizational patterns. Only the …

A Process For Developing Transit Agency Comprehensive Training Plans, Daniel O'Toole, James Marshall

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This report addresses a project whose goals were to create, use, and disseminate information on a process for developing transit agency comprehensive training plans (i.e., plans that contain the training needs for all positions in an organization). The report considers the following:

• The importance of agency training plans and the need for an appropriate process to produce one.

• Information on the project that was undertaken to design and use an appropriate transit agency training plan process.

• The design, components of, and rationale for the training plan process selected for this project.

• Application of the selected training …