Posts categorized under "Research"
SURTC at TRB
Jill Hough and Jeremy Mattson will be participating in the Transportation Research Board's 90th Annual Meeting January 23-27 in Washington, DC.
Hough will give a presentation on Educating the Future Transit Workforce as part of a session on Building the Transit Workforce of Tomorrow January 24 at 8:00 am. She will preside over the TRB Rural Public and Intercity Bus Transportation Conference Planning Subcommittee January 26 at 10:15 am and will also present results from a study, co-authored by David Ripplinger and Bethany Brandt-Sargent, titled Technology Adoption by Small Urban and Rural Transit Agencies in a session on Advances in Rural Public and Intercity Bus Transportation January 26 at 2:30 pm.
Mattson will be involved in two poster sessions: Public Involvement in Transportation on January 24 at 2:30 pm and Safe Mobility of Older Persons on January 25 at 9:30 am. In the first he will highlight progress and provide an overview of the Transit, Technology, and Public Participation Project being conducted by Mattson, Del Peterson, and David Ripplinger, and in the second session he will present findings from his study on Transportation, Distance, and Health Care Utilization for Older Adults in Rural and Small Urban Areas.
Regional Transit Coordination in North Dakota Studied
A new SURTC report titled "Public Transit Regional Coordination Pilot Projects in North Dakota" by Jon Mielke, Carol Wright, David Ripplinger, Dr. James H. Miller, and Del Peterson has been posted online.
This publication is a result of action from North Dakota's 2009 Legislature that directed the state Department of Transportation to initiate two public transit regional coordination projects. NDDOT subsequently contracted with SURTC to develop corresponding implementation plans.
Regional steering committees were created in each region and an extensive public input process was undertaken to solicit input from the regions' transit managers and the public. A review process was also undertaken to study coordination in states that might be similar to North Dakota, to identify corresponding federal mandates concerning the coordination of transit services, and to identify industry best practices from around the country and within the two pilot regions.
Preliminary recommendations were presented to each region's regional steering committee (including all of each region's transit managers) and through a series of public information meetings. The draft report was also shared with all of the state's transit managers; related input was included in the report. The resulting report was presented to NDDOT in December 2010. The department forwarded the report, along with its corresponding implementation plans, to North Dakota's 2011 Legislature. The Legislature will ultimately determine what additional policy directives, if any, are needed.
Presentations from Conference on Rural Public and Intercity Bus Transportation Available Online
The Transportation Research Board has released a Final Program for the 19th National Conference on Rural Public and Intercity Bus Transportation, held October 24-27, 2010, in Burlington, Vermont. Most of the presentations from this conference are now available online and are linked to within this document. Click here to open the Final Program (pdf), and then click on the presenters names highlighted in blue to view the presentations.
SURTC was heavily involved in this conference. Director Jill Hough served as the Chair of the Conference Planning Committee, and researchers David Ripplinger, Del Peterson, and Jeremy Mattson gave presentations and moderated sessions. The following are links to the presentations (pdf documents) given by SURTC staff:
- Ride or Relocate, presented by Del Peterson
- Mobility of Older Adults and People with Disabilities in North Dakota, presented by Jeremy Mattson
- How Rural Areas are Using Technology, presented by David Ripplinger
- Practical Uses of Rural NTD Data, presented by David Ripplinger
Categories: Events, Research
SURTC Publishes Findings from Survey of People with Disabilities
Mobility is fundamental for people to live full and satisfying lives in their communities. For adults with disabilities, access to community transportation is often limited. To address issues of mobility for people with disabilities in North Dakota, SURTC recently completed a study titled "Assessing Existing and Needed Community Transportation for People with Disabilities in North Dakota." This study developed and administered a survey to a sample of people with disabilities in the state. The survey instrument was developed in such a way that it could be used by communities and states beyond North Dakota for collecting similar information and could be used over time to assess progress in providing transportation for adults with disabilities.
Responses were received from 131 people in the state, including those with physical, sensory, cognitive, and emotional disabilities. A large percentage of the respondents were transit-dependent or dependent on others for rides. The survey collected information from individuals regarding their travel behavior, ability to make needed or desired trips, use of community transportation options (public transit, human service agencies, other), unmet needs, and difficulties encountered.
The results indicated that a significant percentage of respondents desire more trips than they are currently taking, and lack of transportation appears to be the main limiting factor. Unmet demand was greatest for leisure, recreation, and social trips, as about two-thirds of respondents said they desired more of these types of trips. The survey also revealed significant dissatisfaction with available transportation options, both in the community and for long-distance trips. The most significant concerns with public transportation regarded service availability. Other service factors that respondents were dissatisfied with include waiting time, scheduling procedures, and ride reservation time. Respondents were most satisfied with being safe from both crime and accidents and were generally satisfied with drivers, vehicle comfort, and access to information.
The study also examined how often individuals make trips, specific problems they have with using fixed-route or paratransit service, use of travel training, and use or door-to-door or door-through-door service, and it compares results from a similar survey conducted nearly a decade ago.
Questions related to the research should be directed to Jeremy Mattson (jeremy.w.mattson@ndsu.edu).
TCRP Report Provides Guidance for Recruiting, Developing, and Retaining Transit Managers
A recently published Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) report provides guidance for transit systems that are having difficulties filling management positions and have limited human resource management resources.
TCRP Report 139: Guidebook for Recruiting, Developing, and Retaining Transit Managers for Fixed-Route Bus and Paratransit Systems provides resources to assist transit systems in the recruitment, development, and retention of managers. This Guidebook is designed primarily to address the needs of rural and small urban transit systems, with information for fixed-route, demand response, and ADA paratransit systems.
PTP Project to Use Open Data Kit
The Transit, Technology, and Public Participation Project will use the Open Data Kit (ODK) suite of tools to collect transit rider information in the field.
Using ODK Collect, one application in the ODK suite, surveyors will be able to collect location, video, and audio information in addition to traditional text-based data. ODK runs on the Android platform an operating system for smartphones, slate computers, and other mobile devices.
The Transit, Technology, and Public Participation project will survey Metro Area Transit riders at bus stops and on vehicles to collect travel behavior and transit service information. Location-capture will be used to geotag completed surveys while audio-capture will allow survey participants to provide detailed, open-ended responses to survey questions.
The Open Data Kit is a collection of open-source and standards-based tools designed to help organizations collect, aggregate and visualize their data.
College Students Not Sure What to Expect from Careers in Transit
Students surveyed as part of a study on public transportation workforce development generally didn't express strong attitudes toward internships or careers in the industry. For the few internship and career characteristics that students did have opinions the perceptions were negative. These characteristics included the belief that work in transit is uninteresting, unchallenging, and does not provide the opportunity to be creative. Project investigators David Ripplinger and Jill Hough of the Small Urban and Rural Transit Center believe that these perceptions may be due to students having little knowledge of the career opportunities in transit.
Students were surveyed to identify attitudes and behaviors that impact their choice of academic major, internship, and career, their perceptions of internships and careers in public transportation, and use of job search methods. More than 1,000 students at North Dakota State University, Minnesota State University Moorhead, and Minnesota State Community and Technical College participated in the study. The project report can be found online at http://www.ugpti.org/pubs/pdf/DP229.pdf.
Transit, Technology, & Public Participation Project on Facebook & Twitter
The Transit, Technology, & Public Participation Project is now on Facebook and Twitter. Follow the links below to visit the sites and follow the developments of the project as they occur.
Transit Technology Report Released
The Small Urban and Rural Transit Center (SURTC) has published the findings from a national survey on technology use by transit agencies serving small urban and rural communities. The survey, which was completed by 451 agencies in 45 states, collected data on agency use of information and communications technologies, transit-specific technology, and manager characteristics. This data was joined with financial and operating statistics from the Rural National Transit Database.
The survey asked questions about managers' familiarity with and agency use of various technologies, the cost of completed implementations, as well as plans for future implementation.
The study modeled the impacts of agency and manager characteristics on the adoption of Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL), Computer-Aided Scheduling and Dispatch software (CASD), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Mobile Data Terminals (MDTs). Agency size measured by fleet size, budget, and trips delivered are significant factors that impact the adoption of technology by rural transit agencies. Manager education and experience, attendance at national conferences, interaction with technology vendors, and participating in technology training were also found to be significant.
The recently released report, Technology Adoption by Small Urban & Rural Transit Agencies, is available in electronic form on the SURTC website.
SURTC Publishes Report on Rural Intercity Transportation
With higher fuel costs and changing economic conditions, travel behavior and the level and allocation of resources in highways, rail, air, and transit service in rural areas may be changing. The objective of a recently completed SURTC study, titled Assessing Demand for Rural Intercity Transportation in a Changing Environment, was to determine the attitude of would-be passengers in their choice of mode and the factors determining their choice in rural and small urban areas.
A survey was administered to residents of North Dakota and northwest and west central Minnesota that asked respondents to identify their mode of choice in different hypothetical situations where there were five modes available: automobile, air, bus, train, and van. A model was developed and used to estimate the likelihood that an individual would choose a given mode based on the characteristics of the mode, the characteristics of the individual, and the characteristics of the trip. Results show that, to some extent, travelers, especially those of lower income, respond to higher gasoline prices by choosing alternative modes in greater numbers, suggesting rural intercity bus, van, and rail ridership would increase if gasoline prices rose.
Results also show that age, gender, income, transit experience, traveler attitudes, travel time, trip purpose, and party size affect mode choice. More specifically, the study found the following:
- The odds of choosing air travel decreases for older individuals.
- Men are more likely than women to choose automobile.
- People of higher income have a greater odds of choosing automobile than those with lower income.
- The odds of choosing air travel are greater for business travelers and those traveling alone.
- Individuals are more likely to choose automobile if they are traveling for personal reasons rather than business.
- People are more likely to choose alternative modes if they have used them in the past.
Lower income individuals were found to be more sensitive to changes in travel cost, suggesting that much of the demand shift to bus, train, and van under higher gasoline prices would be from those with lower incomes. The effect of fuel price on mode choice for higher income individuals was very small, even with hypothetical $6 gas. While future fuel costs will impact demand for intercity services, changing demographics may also impact demand. Our findings indicate that an aging population is more likely to choose intercity train, van, or bus service rather than air for regional travel.
The study also examined attitudes toward intercity transportation – respondents showed the most interest in timeliness, comfort, cleanliness, and predictability – and how those attitudes influence mode choice.
This study and other recently completed reports are available on the SURTC website. Questions related to the research should be directed to Jeremy Mattson (jeremy.w.mattson@ndsu.edu).