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The National Academies

NCHRP 08-130 [Active]

Best Practices in Coordination of Public Transit and Ride Sharing

  Project Data
Funds: $250,000
Staff Responsibility: Christopher McKenney
Research Agency: Texas A&M Transportation Institute
Principal Investigator: Todd Hansen
Effective Date: 9/1/2022
Completion Date: 8/31/2024
Comments: Research in progress.

BACKGROUND
                                                           
Shared-Use Mobility (SUM) commonly includes ride sharing, car sharing, ride hailing, microtransit, mobility on demand, and vanpooling services/systems, as well as other forms of transportation services that are shared among users, as defined in TCRP Research Report 188. The emergence of SUM practices in urban areas raises the question of how any of these practices can be applied in less populated areas. There may be an opportunity to use these urban SUM practices to address the unmet transportation needs in less populated communities. SUM applications have been successful at connecting people to mobility options, and there is increasing interest by small urban, rural, and frontier communities to pursue partnerships/SUM practices as a means to improve overall mobility and accessibility.
 
In less densely populated areas, fewer private transportation options, greater distances between origins and destinations, limited public transportation staff and resources, and lack of supporting infrastructure (e.g., wireless cellular network coverage and broadband) create challenges to successfully implement SUM options. However, some of these SUM options from urban areas may be properly scaled.
 
Research is needed to further existing research in this area to aid state departments of transportation (DOTs) in providing technical assistance to public transportation providers in order to meet the increasingly varied transportation needs of communities.  
 
 
 
 

OBJECTIVE
 
The objective of this research is to provide state DOTs and public transportation providers with a report and implementation guidebook on innovative applications for integrating public transportation in less populated areas with SUM services and providers. For this research, SUM services include ride sharing, car sharing, ride hailing, microtransit, mobility on demand, and vanpooling services/systems. The report must include case studies of urban, rural, and frontier partnerships. The case studies, will at a minimum, highlight challenges and solutions addressing the following:
 
  • ADA accessibility,
  • regulatory, policy, and funding issues,
  • service and cost efficiency,
  • scalability to small urban, rural, and frontier communities,
  • liability concerns, and
  • data security.


STATUS: Research in progress.

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