This project explored an innovative strategy for operating paratransit services that are required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Many transit agencies providing paratransit services within large service areas adopt zone service strategies. Some of these services can be inefficient because of the large amount of empty trip miles driven by transit buses for serving cross-zonal customers. This project quantified the potential benefits of enabling service providers to efficiently serve trips of cross-zonal customers in need of round trip rides. This project investigated both static and dynamic scheduling scenarios.
The main benefits resulting from implementation of this innovative operating strategy will be a reduction of the empty trip miles driven (and their associated operating costs) for paratransit services, and an improvement of the level of service provided to customers.
