Transportation Research and Education Center

PRESENTATION ARCHIVE

• Video
• Presentation slides

OVERVIEW

Many transit agencies plan to automate their fare collection and limit the use of cash, with the goals of improving boarding and data collection while lowering operating costs. Yet about 10% of adults in the United States lack a bank account or credit card, and many either rely on restrictive cell-phone data plans or don’t have access to internet or a smartphone. 

This webinar will present part of a larger research project exploring these issues in the cities of Denver, Colorado, and Eugene and Portland–Gresham, Oregon. In this part, we explore the tradeoffs between reducing cash acceptance, ridership and the costs of fare collection systems. How much does it save to reduce cash acceptance, verses ridership and equity impacts?

We will also present a cost-effectiveness framework that combines a qualitative and quantitative analysis and use this model to explore case scenarios in our three cities. The model shows that adding a retail network to...

The video begins at 1:26.

Abstract: How do commuter rail riders choose access modes? This presentation discusses the results of an analysis of access mode choice by riders of one of the first U.S. suburb-to-suburb commuter railroads, the Westside Express Service (WES) in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. The study uses on-board survey data collected by the region’s transit agency, Tri-Met, during WES’s first year of operation. The data include observed access mode choices, historical mode usage, and subjective assessment of WES attributes. A hierarchical choice model was estimated, using attributes of the access trip and station areas as well as rider characteristics. The estimation results showed evidence of pre-WES mode inertia effects in choosing drive access, pro-sustainability attitudes in choosing bike access, the importance of comfort for light rail and auto access modes, as well as strong positive station-area effects of connecting bus lines and parking space provision. The hierarchical choice model revealed significant substitution effects between drive and light rail modes and between bike and walk modes. This study provides potentially valuable insights to agencies for the purposes of station-area planning and targeted marketing efforts.

View slides

Watch video:

Successful public transit systems increase the value of locations they serve. Capturing this location value to help fund transit is often sensible, but challenging.

This presentation will define location value capture, and synthesize lessons learned from six European and North American transit agencies that have experience with location value capture funding.

The opportunities for and barriers to implementing location value capture fall into three categories:

• agency...

View slides

Abstract: Our speaker for May 14, 2010 is Gill V. Hicks, Director Southern California Operations for Cambridge Systematics, Inc.  For more than ten years, Mr. Hicks served as the General Manager of the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority (ACTA).  The $2.4 billion Alameda Corridor consolidated harbor-related railroad traffic onto a single 20-mile corridor between the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the railroad mainlines near downtown Los Angeles.  Mr. Hicks’ responsibilities included overall management of the agency, building consensus, estimating benefits and costs of the project, generating political support, testifying before U.S. Congress, State Legislature, regulatory bodies, city councils, funding agencies and other stakeholders; developing a financial plan, raising funds, coordinating with railroad, trucking, and shipping businesses, and managing contracts for the project.

Mr. Hicks will discuss the major challenges faced by the project, including negotiations with three competing railroads, several municipal governments, utilities, regulatory agencies, contractors, and funding entities.  The process for consensus building will be discussed. Major lessons learned will be described, including methods for reducing project risk, keeping on schedule and within budget. Mr. Hicks will also touch on the challenges facing the agency as...