FINAL SCOPE
Background
The Covid 19 Pandemic has caused a major disruption to transit ridership, with many transit systems, especially ones in large cities, only currently reaching 65 to 80% of pre-pandemic ridership levels. Peak commuting-based ridership has been hardest hit because of the dramatic increase in work from home by previous in-office workers. All trends indicate that office work will become a hybrid structure of work from home and in-office work. This will result in all cases in significant decreases of commuting during workdays by public transit.
At the same time, the Pandemic highlighted the critical importance of the availability of public transit service to essential and industrial shift workers, who are often totally reliant on public transport.
As society emerges from the depths of the Pandemic, one observes that off-peak ridership is appearing to be more resilient than peak ridership, and many transit agencies have been increasingly focusing on off-peak service and its ridership in order to create 24/7 ubiquitous mobility and accessibility: this has been validated by some market research that has shown that linking transit to cultural and social opportunities and focusing on off-peak as opposed to peak travel, may be an important component in rebuilding transit ridership as we emerge from the Pandemic.
Synthesis Objective
The objective of this synthesis is to document the initiatives of transit agencies to support nighttime off-peak transit ridership. There are two different initiatives that should be documented by this research:
- Initiatives to support the nighttime transit demand; and,
- Initiatives to support nighttime essential, service, and shift workers.
Information to be Gathered will include:
- Identification of nighttime economies for specific communities.
- How are nighttime services planned? Describe the transit agency daytime service.
- What are the interaction mechanisms between transit, municipal/county/regional economic development and management staff, and employers/businesses associations in planning these services?
- How much transit agency staff time is dedicated to the planning and operation of nighttime services?
- Is any effort made to distinguish between the needs of the two above types of nighttime service markets; the nighttime economy transit demand tends to focus on downtown social and cultural districts, while essential / service employee demand often focuses on suburban locations of health or industrial campuses?
- Are any special services planned to serve nighttime markets? Challenges to these plans? These might include:
- A distinct network of owl-type services that can vary in structure;
- On-demand transit / microtransit;
- Contracted service with TNCs or shared-ride taxis;
- Extended service hours on existing routes;
- Rail replaced by buses.
- Does the transit agency work with employers to establish corporate partnerships to train customers on how to use the special services?
- Does the transit agency monitor transit nighttime travel patterns (e.g., ridership origins, destinations, distances, traveler characteristics)Does the transit agency conduct any specific market research or focus groups to identify issues and needs of the nighttime transit markets?
- How are security concerns addressed, both from the operations and infrastructure perspectives?
- How do these considerations vary by city size (e.g., whereas major cities might have dedicated night management staff, smaller and midsized cities might be more likely to assign such duties to existing staff who have other responsibilities)?
- Do the agencies have any guidelines or policies that they follow in planning these services? (e.g., minimum frequencies, bus stops locations, courtesy stops deviations).
- How do these compare to the daytime services?
- What are the fare collection policies for nighttime services?
How the Information Will Be Gathered
Information will be gathered by a literature review (e.g. agency reports, peer reviewed journal articles, web articles) and a survey on a broad range of North American transit agencies. The report should include five case examples from different size agencies and different approaches that will gather information on the state-of-the-practice, emphasizing lessons learned, current practices, challenges, and gaps.
Information Sources
Meeting Dates
First Meeting (Topic Panel): September 27, 2023
Second Meeting (Topic Panel and Consultant): November 20, 2023
Topic Panel
Mark Donaghy, Retired
Tony Filippini, Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority
Jose Hernandez, Cubic Transportation Systems, Inc.
Al Himes, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Bruce Jones, Charlotte Area Transit System
Aimee Reichert, Senior Project Manager
John Santamaria, Clever Devices, Ltd.
Kimberly J. Williams, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County
Sam Winward, Pittsburgh Regional Transit
FTA Liaison
Patrick Centolanzi, Federal Transit Administration
Ivey Glendon, Federal Transit Administration
