Executive Summary
Advances in computers, telecommunications, and information system technologies have led to the development of a wide range of applications that can improve the efficiency and quality of service for all forms of transportation, including public transit. These developments provide additional tools to help manage the complexity that often arises when local transportation providers coordinate their services.
This study presents the experiences of three organizations as they planned, implemented, and operated intelligent system (ITS) to meet the mobility needs of the communities they serve through improved coordination. These agencies are the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) in Michigan; Reach Your Destination Easily (R.Y.D.E.) in Nebraska; and NDinfo.org in North Dakota. The objective is to provide parties considering or currently involved with the planning and operation of intelligent transportation systems with additional insight gained from knowledge of the unique experience of each of the three organizations. For each of these organizations, technical and institutional issues, requirements, benefits and costs, lessons learned and agreements among transportation providers and funding agencies are described fully in the report.
The Three Systems
SMART provides fixed-route and demand-response service to Wayne, Macomb, and Oakland Counties in southeast Michigan. It also works with and administers programs and locally generated funds for community transportation providers which are referred to as community partners. SMART currently employs a broad array of technologies to help it provide transportation to the communities it serves. However, the centerpiece of SMART's current intelligent transportation system related to coordination is its real-time demand-response system. This system allows its community partners, local social service agencies and other entities to schedule rides on either SMART's or its community partners' fleet. The system relies upon an information and computational hub, located at their Oakland Terminal, which may be accessed via the Internet. As the data processing for system occurs at the hub, a low-cost computer can be used by community partners and others to take advantage of the same functionality available to SMART itself.
R.Y.D.E. is a transportation broker located in Kearney, Neb., a city of nearly 30,000, and provides services to a multi-county region. Though only a little over five years old, R.Y.D.E. has seen tremendous growth in ridership, much of which would not have been possible in the absence of technology, primarily scheduling and dispatch software. As part of its adoption of new technology, R.Y.D.E. developed its own ITS architecture, a process that has provided numerous benefits to the agency and the community it serves. R.Y.D.E. has long-term plans for the implementation of additional technology including mobile data terminals
NDinfo.org is a novel statewide approach to address the challenges of mobility in North Dakota. The intent is for NDinfo.org to mature into an online hub of information on various social services, including transportation service, available to individuals throughout the state. One of the program's most promising features will allow for increased coordination of transportation services across North Dakota. Its transportation module currently consists of a searchable online database. It is intended to eventually provide users with the ability to schedule rides and purchase tickets for trips provided by more than one entity.
Measuring the Impacts of ITS on System Performance
The benefits from coordination to southeast Michigan resulting from the organizational structure of SMART have been estimated at approximately $2.7 million in 2002 dollars (1). This is the difference between the funding received by local transportation providers, $7 million, and the estimated cost of SMART delivering those same rides, $9.7 million. The latter value was found by multiplying the number of trips provided by SMART's community partners by the average SMART paratransit trip cost. It should be noted that much of this savings results from SMART's organization structure and not directly from ITS, though it would be difficult for SMART to provide the high quality of service to its clients without the use of advanced technology.
The annual financial benefits arising from R.Y.D.E's coordination efforts in Kearney, Neb., have been estimated to be $400,358 (1). This value was determined by multiplying the difference between pre-coordination and post-coordination per trip costs, $5.08, times the number of trips provided, 78,220. As R.Y.D.E. was quickly approaching the point at which traditional methods of scheduling and dispatch were no longer efficient, most, if not all of the $400,358 can be attributed to the introduction of advanced technologies and the processes used to manage them which allowed for further coordination to occur.
Given the infancy of NDinfo.org, it is difficult to quantify the impacts of the program. Presently, NDinfo.org's transportation component provides little functionality beyond its searchable database. Its proposed content and capabilities show great promise for increased coordination among transportation providers in North Dakota. However, a significant amount of work that will make this possible has yet to be completed. Even when it does provide the planned functionality, measuring its impacts will be difficult.
Recommendations for the Successful Implementation of ITS
Community transportation providers can learn a number of lessons from the experiences of SMART, R.Y.D.E., and NDinfo.org in designing and implementing ITS. While many of these lessons are specifically related to ITS and coordination others are more general in nature. These lessons are classified into three categories: understanding and educating the community; identifying, tailoring, and adopting the proper technology; and making the most of available resources.
With respect to understanding and educating the community, the three agencies learned to appreciate the importance of understanding the community transportation system, identifying actual needs, promoting adoption, and educating employees, riders and the community. To better frame the mobility challenges facing his community and how they could be addressed, the manager at R.Y.D.E took an introductory course in systems engineering. In North Dakota, a series of public forums were held to identify the actual transportation needs of its residents. Despite efforts to make it as beneficial to users as possible, SMART has had difficulty with the adoption of its integrated scheduling and dispatch system. Following the introduction of its scheduling and dispatch software, R.Y.D.E.'s drivers were educated about the software and the benefits it provided the organization, riders, and the community. That education helped the driver more fully appreciate the system.
Lessons related to identifying, tailoring, and adopting technology include the issues of developing an ITS architecture, staying focused on outcomes, user friendliness, centralization, scalability, and redundancy and backup. R.Y.D.E. developed and implemented its own ITS architecture which required it to work with other shareholders in the community, think about long-term functionality and the way information is shared between system parts. R.Y.D.E. also stayed focused on outcomes by thinking about the impacts of technology on riders and the community and not becoming enamored with technology itself. The success of NDinfo.org, the online database, is strongly dependant on its user friendliness. The issues of centralization, scalability, redundancy, and backup were important to SMART and its centralized computer scheduling and dispatch system.
The limited resources available to design, implement, and make use of technology in transportation systems present a challenge for all involved. There are high costs to being the first mover where technologies have not been tested and refined, as experienced by SMART which has been an innovator in ITS for over a decade. Attracting and retaining technologically adept managers who can take full advantage of limited funds and the technologies implemented, as was done by R.Y.D.E., is also important. Consultants are often necessary to ensure the successful design and deployment of technology, but they should not replace on-site understanding of the system. In Michigan, SMART learned first hand that there are financial benefits to adopting generic technology. It is also important to account for long-term viability, as NDinfo.org has done by providing information on a number of services, including those outside of transportation that would provide funding to sustain the service. Finally, agencies should be able to handle the day-to-day operation of the system. Occasional technical assistance will likely be necessary as in the case of NDinfo.org.
1. Improving Community Transportation
Delivering transportation services to a community is a difficult task. In many small urban and rural communities a single individual is responsible for managing all aspects of an agency from operations, human resources, and marketing, to finance. As a result, finding the time and resources to plan for and implement changes to the organization's service policy or to study the adoption of new technologies and management techniques is often quite difficult. The challenge is even more pronounced when the goal is for agencies to coordinate with one another to improve the efficiency of the entire community transportation system. Barriers to coordination may include concerns about regulatory requirements, perceived incompatibility of goals and needs, and uncertainty of the benefits that accrue to each agency are often noted.
Fortunately, a number of contemporaneous developments make the present an opportune time for transportation providers throughout the nation to revisit the issues of coordination, technology, and management techniques. Efforts at coordination among local transportation providers are receiving a greater emphasis and in many parts of the country additional resources have been made available. The price of technology targeted at the issues faced by small urban and rural transportation providers continues to fall. Finally, the management techniques and processes for making the most of available resources continue to be refined and, in their present form, may provide valuable alternatives in addressing the mobility needs of a community's residents.
Designing and implementing an intelligent transportation system at the regional, as opposed to agency, level provides a number of benefits. Many of the benefits and challenges of developing a regional intelligent transportation system are the same as those faced when agencies try to coordinate their services. Identifying these benefits and how the challenges can be addressed are two of the motivations for this report.
In this report, the experiences of three organizations are analyzed. These organizations include the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART), Reach Your Destination Easily (R.Y.D.E.), and NDinfo.org. The analysis focuses on each entity's planning for, implementing, and operating Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to meet the mobility needs of area residents through improved coordination.
The goal of this analysis is to provide transferable insights regarding the design and operation of ITS. First among these is the integral role ITS can play in assisting in coordination efforts. Technical and institutional issues, requirements, benefits and costs, lessons learned, and agreements among transportation providers and funding agencies will be addressed when applicable.
The report is divided into five sections. Section 2 provides an introduction to the issues of coordination, mobility management, and ITS. Case studies are presented in Section 3. Each organization's motivations, barriers to coordination, proposed ITS solutions and their effects are presented. Section 4 is comprised of the lessons learned from each of the three cases. A summary of the findings is presented in Section 5.