Clemson Transportation Systems Research

The Clemson project team will work closely with the South Carolina Department of Transportation, the Transit Advisory Committee, and key stakeholders to develop a framework for addressing transit planning issues in the state of South Carolina. The objectives of this research are:

• to make recommendations and provide guidance to eliminate service duplication,
• to identify any restrictive rules or policies,
• to suggest the pooling or consolidating of resources and activities,
• to recommend means of information sharing among service providers,
• to identify ways to tap into other federal and state sources of funding utilized by other state agencies to provide transportation,
• to propose expanding service to unserved or underserved areas of the state, and
• to offer ideas for improving access to jobs, medical services, and education.

Background and Significance of Work

The South Carolina Department of Transportation has set a vision for the state to improve its public transit offerings because “building effective public transportation systems improves access to community facilities and enhances the performance of the state’s transportation system.” Existing transit services range from cities with multiple fixed-route bus services to rural areas with demand-responsive service; many counties in the state have no transit service whatsoever (Figure 1). According to South Carolina’s Multimodal Transportation Plan through 2022, strategies identified for improving services in the state include the following.

• “Expand transit services to currently unserved communities.
• “Combine other community uses with transit facilities.
• “Establish information exchange and partnerships with other modal operations.
• “Establish interregional cooperation between existing transit providers in the state.
• “Provide funding incentives for multimodal transportation activities.”

In particular, the Plan cites that Catawba, Upper Savannah, Lower Savannah, and Low Country Councils of Government have made concerted efforts to use transit funding efficiently to meet the expectations of these strategies.

The rural nature of South Carolina lends itself to the necessity for coordinated transit services. Sparsely distributed populations make fixed-route service provision inefficient and expensive; therefore, rural areas typically require demand-response services to accommodate mobility needs for people who cannot drive for physical, mental, or financial reasons. In 2003, demand-response trips in the United States averaged 8.4 miles, compared to the mere 3.7-mile average trip by bus, reflecting the distances associated with trips in sparsely populated areas. Not only do transit providers need to cover the extra distance, but the cost of driving that distance does not amortize across the needs of a large number of people, leading to trips that cost eight times as much on demand-response service as on fixed-route ($21.34 per unlinked trip, as opposed to $2.68) with fares only covering one-tenth of the cost (Table). With the high costs intrinsic in the demand-response transportation that South Carolina must use in most of its communities, the coordination of transportation providers will reduce the burden through cost efficiencies.

National-level research has examined the situation and trends of demand-response transit service and found alarming realities. Overall, demand response transit has declining performance in terms of cost efficiency (the cost of operating service per revenue-hour of service), cost effectiveness (cost of service per passenger served), and service effectiveness (the number of passengers served per revenue-hour of operation). Unfavorable increases in service scale (system size) and service scope (an increase in the types of service or hours of service offered) likely combine with the decreasing population densities of the American landscape to create these problems. Additional contributing factors include the increasing circuity of travel habits, paratransit service agreements that contract per passenger with no incentive for scale economies, and the increasing need for passenger assistance as the American population ages (*). South Carolina needs to pay particular attention to that last contributing factor because many communities in the state are aggressively working to attract a retirement population without necessarily considering implications of mobility requirements for an aging population.

* Transit Cooperative Research Program Synthesis 57: Computer-Aided Scheduling and Dispatch in Demand-Responsive Transit Services, 2004.

Investigation has also entered into the realm of coordination of transit services, revealing that many fixed-route transit agencies have managed to improve service efficiency by collaborating and subcontracting to smaller operators, particularly for demand-response service. In fact, only seven percent of America’s fixed-route operators operate all demand-response service in house; on the other hand, most of them retain a role in this service. Most prevalently, two-thirds of large agencies outsource service delivery, but 43 percent of large agencies manage reservation systems in house. About one-third of large agencies also schedule their service providers.

Another potential area for streamlining management and operations comes in the form of coordinated technology. If transit operators within one district or in adjacent service delivery areas agree on standard technology platforms from the start, they can purchase compatible equipment and train staff to use the technology simultaneously, which can lead to reduced prices through combined purchasing power and compatible technology to facilitate further communication and collaboration.

This research project will take such national state-of-the-practice ideas and apply them as they pertain specifically to South Carolina’s transit service needs. South Carolina needs a strategic means of characterizing current service offerings and identifying means of improving service while increasing efficiency with limited resources.

Benefits

In South Carolina, transit service inefficiencies exist in both fixed route and demand-response systems. Even in the state’s largest cities, ridership is low and per-passenger costs are high making it difficult to maintain metropolitan transit systems. The situation is most difficult still for rural paratransit or demand response systems. One of the distinguishing characteristics of demand response vehicles is their unique needs for accessibility for users. According to the American Public Transportation Association, 93 percent of vehicles are accessible by lift or ramp (Figure 2). Low ridership, irregular schedules and the need for vehicle enhancements make rural service delivery a particularly high cost transportation alternative. Yet, for many in rural areas of the state, demand-response service is the only option. If that option is to be available at current or higher levels of service, better coordinated and more efficient service delivery systems are essential.

Aside from rural outlying areas, transit coordination can bring benefits in contexts of cities and the transition zones between cities and outlying areas. Within cities such as Columbia, communication between university and municipal transit services can bring greater coverage of destinations of interest to university students, local residents, and downtown employees. Transit providers operating in the same area stand to improve total service offerings and quality by combining resources in bids for funding or allocation of equipment. In Upstate South Carolina, coordinating schedules and stops between providers such as Clemson Area Transit, Greenville Transit, and Electric City Transit brings potential to mitigate growing traffic between Clemson, Anderson, and Greenville, which sit along the I-85 corridor in an area that the South Carolina Department of Transportation now expects to require widening to ten lanes before 2022.

Coordination can take many forms, and the benefits can be just as varied:

• In Portland, Oregon, demand-response transit providers work in league with local taxi companies. Senior citizens there can qualify for service based on age and regardless of standards of personal mobility. Paratransit operators cannot afford to dispatch fully-equipped vehicles to perform a service equivalent to taxi operations; therefore, the operator subcontracts such calls to cab companies. The cab companies benefit from a steady flow of revenue, and the paratransit operator can dispatch wheelchair-accessible vehicles to people who need them. In the long run, a paratransit operator can save money on vehicle acquisition. Nationally, seven percent of all demand-response fleets do not comply with the wheelchair accessibility requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (Figure 2), which might suggest that a number of demand-response agencies are servicing non-essential trips.
• In addition to improved standard employment, health, and social service access, tourism areas have found their own means of collaborating to achieve scale economies in their investments. Because many tourist destinations must operate in seasonal environments, summer resort areas like those found along the South Carolina coast do well to pair themselves with other activities that may have a heavier winter demand for services. Rather than purchasing a fleet of buses for service in five months of the year and storage in seven, some summer coastal areas send their buses to the mountains for winter duty at ski resorts.

Improved transit services provide better access to employment, schools, medical services, shopping, and church and community activities. Coordination of services involves vehicle and driver sharing, route coordination, and shared dispatching. Benefits of sharing dispatch include:

• software costs,
• cost of training and expertise, and
• a centralized system resulting in less confusion for people calling for a ride.

At the federal level, the United We Ride program has demonstrated that coordination of services can bring scale economies of the resources currently spent by agencies not traditionally considered to have a transportation component. Many social service agencies provide human service transportation necessary for delivering their other functions. By order of President George W. Bush, the United We Ride program brings together the Secretaries of Transportation, Health and Human Services, Education, Labor, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and the Interior, the Attorney General, and the Commissioner of Social Security. All of these represented agencies have an important stake in collaborating to create transit service efficiencies.

Ultimately, the benefits of collaboration include:

• efficient use of resources available,
• equitable distribution of resources,
• avoidance of service duplication, and
• opportunity for service expansion given operational efficiencies.

Beyond the identified general benefits of collaboration and coordination, the primary benefits specific to this research project come from gaining a clear understanding of the public transit service resources in the state and a tailored application of state-of-the-practice thought on effective collaboration for the state’s communities. This research project will result in a clearly defined plan for improving coordination using explicit tools for increasing collaboration, and the document of the plan will serve as a centralized shared resource for the South Carolina Department of Transportation, local communities, and transit service providers. Ultimately, the research team at Clemson intends to produce necessary background information and an operational plan to assist in providing a more effective public transit service delivery system in the state.