1. The Coordination Challenge and Project Approach

1.1 Need for Coordinated Public Transportation Services

Personal mobility is crucial to full participation in society and the economy. Fortunately, most residents of North Dakota have access to personal vehicles that allow them access to jobs, education, employment, medical and social opportunities. However, according to the 2000 Census, about 7 percent of the households in the state do not own any vehicles. Individuals in these households must depend on public transportation, friends, families or human service agencies to provide rides.

Until the 1960s private companies provided public transportation in most urban areas and within and between rural areas. However, as personal vehicle ownership soared after World War II, ridership on public systems declined and unprofitable services were discontinued. Beginning in the 1970s, government-funded transit and human service transportation programs were started to meet the mobility needs of individuals without access to private vehicle transportation because of a lack of income or physical or mental disability that prevented them from operating a vehicle. Private bus systems were converted to public ownership to continue general-purpose public transportation. Further, with the addition of federal and state transit funding support, rural public services were started in areas that did not have any public service. Finally, human service agencies set up transportation programs to allow their clients access to their services and other needed programs.

In many cases, the result of these efforts to provide needed mobility was a duplication of services resulting from each organization serving particular market niches. Many communities experienced the situation in which buses from various organizations with only a few passengers each followed each other around communities giving the impression of inefficient, expensive and poorly managed service.

1.2 Evolution of the Coordination Concept

Coordination, cooperation and collaboration all refer to situation where groups of people, programs, and/or funding sources work together to improve services to clients through a more unified approach. The underlying assumption is that a group of entities working together can create a greater benefit for the whole of society than individual programs and entities working separately.

By the late 1970s many funding agencies and local providers realized that this uncoordinated, overlapping service was costly and denied their clients and the general public of needed services. Forward-thinking policy makers and operators began talking about ways to encourage transportation programs to combine or coordinate their operations to avoid inefficient duplication of services. Because coordination or consolidation of transportation services involved a change to the status quo, the changes did not come quickly or easily. In addition, providers pursuing coordination soon realized that state and federal funding programs often had different reporting requirements, funding approaches, definition of terms, and service objectives that complicated the task of providing and paying for coordinated transportation.

The General Accounting Office in 1977 indicated there where as many as 114 federal programs providing money for transportation. This finding and the resultant public discussion marked a turning point in the federal approach to funding transportation. The federal government no longer encouraged new programs, but instead, promoted consolidation and elimination of existing programs. When Congress authorized funding for rural and specialized transportation services in 1978 (the Section 18 and 16(b)2 programs), the US DOT regulations for these programs required applicants to show how their public or specialized transportation service was coordinating with other transportation services. By 1981, the office of Human Development Services of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that more than half the states had taken steps to improve coordination.¹ The federal government has also done its part in coordinating and reducing programs for transportation. By 2001 there were 62 identified programs for funding transportation, and 29 of the programs administered $2.4 billion² for transportation through the departments of Transportation, Health and Human Services, Education, and Labor.

For more than 30 years the US Departments of Transportation and Health and Human Services have encouraged cooperation and sought to reduce regulatory and administrative barriers to coordination. However, the most successful coordination efforts have resulted from local, grass-root initiatives to increase the efficiency and availability of transportation services, and by state laws and regulations that mandate coordination. Two of the earliest state-mandated coordination initiatives were in Florida and North Carolina in the late 1970s. These and other state efforts are discussed in the next chapter. Studies of the benefits and costs of coordination and case studies of effective coordination have also been published over the past 30 years to encourage coordination. Several of these reports are summarized in the next chapter.

1.3 North Dakota Situation

North Dakota's public and human service transportation services evolved along the same program-specific approaches as did those in many other states. Individual human service agencies funded and/or operated transportation programs to support their basic missions. In addition, in recent years federal and state funding has led to the inception or expansion of public transit services in many areas of the state. Until recently, little attention has been paid to reducing duplication of services and coordination of transportation programs. However, in the past two years a new emphasis on coordination by the North Dakota Department of Transportation has led to an examination of the policy, funding, and operational options available to maximize the benefit of public transportation funds it manages and those of human service programs. This need to increase the effectiveness of transportation resources is crucial because of increasing needs for service and increasing difficulty in providing services especially in the rural western portion of the state where the overall population is declining and the remaining population is aging.

To help it collect information about the current public and human service transportation programs in North Dakota and to formulate ways to increase coordination and effectiveness of state and federal funds, the North Dakota Department of Transportation contracted with the Small Urban and Rural Transit Center (SURTC) at North Dakota State University (NDSU) to assist in conducting this coordination study. This report summarizes the one-year effort and provides background information needed to make policy decisions to improve coordination.

1.4 Study Approach

Transportation coordination at the state funding level or at the local operations level, requires extensive personal interaction and negotiation to work out the best service plan for all organizations funding, using, or providing service. Therefore, the study process included intensive discussion and collaboration between effected groups, organizations, and individuals, supported by research and data collection by the SURTC study team.

The study was guided by a steering committee that included representatives from state funding and program agencies and local human service and transportation providers. A list of the members is included in the steering committee meeting minutes (Appendix G). This steering committee met twice during the study; once at the start of the study to review the work plan and suggest additional issues and study participants, and at the end of the study to review final findings and recommendations.

The study also involved funders, providers, and users of transportation services through eight regional meetings held throughout the state during the first six months of 2004. Each of these meetings, attended by 20-30 persons, provided an opportunity for users, human service agencies and transportation providers to discuss issues and needs in their regions. Participants also gave the study team members leads to help identify additional needs and/or transportation resources. Another purpose of the regional meetings was to bring together individuals that have a stake in public and human service transportation coordination and allow them (many for the first time) to meet each other and discuss ways they might work together to improve transportation services for their customers by sharing resources and information.

The SURTC team also conducted a literature review and a survey of practices to learn how other states encouraged coordination. The literature review, summarized in the next chapter, included studies on the benefits and costs of coordination, techniques to encourage and require coordination, and case studies of successful coordination efforts. The survey of other states' approaches to coordination included a review of state coordination studies, legislation, regulations, and evaluations.

The SURTC team conducted a literature review and assembled information on current transportation providers in North Dakota. State agencies and professional groups provided the information that includes the number of transportation providers in each region, operating data describing the size and scope of the transportation operations, and detailed funding data. This data is necessary to understand the nature of the coordination challenge in each region and the resources available to improve service.

Based on the results of the regional meetings, data collection, and review of the literature, the SURTC team developed a range of alternative policies that could increase transportation coordination. These options were reviewed and refined by the advisory committee. The SURTC team developed detailed descriptions and assessed the benefits and costs of each option. These analyses as well as a summary of the other activities of the study are included in this final report.

1.5 Report Organization

Chapter 2 of this report presents the literature review and a summary of other states' approaches to coordination with special emphasis on programs that might be applicable in North Dakota. Chapter 3 presents state-level data on public and human service transportation programs and then specific data for each of the state's planning regions. Chapter 4 presents summaries of the regional meetings. Chapter 5 presents and evaluates five coordination policy options that might be considered by the state, and presents a summary and conclusions of the study effort and suggested next steps to implement the recommended programs and policies.