Transportation on Demand: where are we now?

Posted on December 14, 2007 by Matthieu Desiderio

About two years ago (April-July 2005), I wrote a report entitled “Les transports à la demande aux Etats-Unis” (Transportation on Demand in the United States, see below). Working for the French Trade Office in Washington, DC, we wanted to gather the US best practices in this field to provide the French administration and transportation officials with recommendations on how to wisely develop this type of transportation systems in our country.

I recently received the TRB e-newsletter from Russell Houston (see here) mentionning a new report from the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) about paratransit (Ref.: Improving ADA Complementary Paratransit Demand Estimation, see below) which deals specifically with one type of on demand transport: complementary paratransit service by public transit agencies under requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. I then decided that transportation on demand would be the subject of my first article…

Paratransit in the United States, a world example?

In the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 imposed on transit authorities to provide door-to-door transportation services for people with disabilities that could not use regular transit systems. Seventeen years after it has been implemented, around 6 000 transit authorities are organizing, financing, and operating paratransit services within 3/4 miles around each of the regular itineraries they control (bus, light rail, heavy rail, etc.).

The operation of such services cost a lot to the transportation authorities: $2.83 billion were spent on operating cost in 2005. These expenses accounted for 9.3% of the total operating expenses while reprensenting only 1.3% of unlinked passenger trips or 2.1% of passenger miles traveled. Moreover, passenger fares only represented $286 million, letting the user share slightly above 10% (see APTA 2007 Public Transportation Fact Book for more detailed statistics).In spite of the important cost of such operations, we considered it to be one of the most pragmatic and efficient method to offer a transportation solution when it is not possible (either technically or financially) to make all public transportation systems fully accessible.

What is going on in France?

In the meantime we started writing our study, a law was enacted in France on Feb. 11th, 2005, called “Loi sur l’égalité des droits et des chances, la participation et la citoyenneté des personnes handicapées” that boosted the obligations for transit authorities to provide more accessible transportation systems and make accessible the existing networks. The French law, in some way similar to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, imposes that not only public transportation systems must be accessible but also the whole “mobility chain”: from door-to-door, people with disabilities should not encounter moving barriers.

As a consequence, transit authorities are not anymore the only ones involved in this mobility improvement process: urban planners, architects and project managers do have to think their infrastructures in a way it should be accessible for all. Most of the people with disabilities could then reach and ride the regular transit networks. Yet, some areas cannot be remodelled, again because of technical and financial problems; transportation authorities have then, by law, the responsibility to provide transportation alternatives for people with disabilities and are in charge of operation and financing of these new services: we were getting closer to the American way of thinking our paratransit networks.

Paratransit implementation really started at this time, even if couple examples of door-to-door transit systems could have been found since the early 1990′s in France. Since 2005, it has really been growing up, and by February 2008, all transit authorities will have to disclose a “Mobility Master Plan” (Schéma Directeur de l’Accessibilité) detailing all accessible services and alternative solutions that are available in their area… This will be the occasion to discuss this subject again.

Transportation on demand is not only paratransit

While paratransit services account for a large part of on demand transport solutions, our study also mentionned other kinds of transport systems. From shared ride services such as airport shuttles (eg. SuperShuttle) to carpooling, astonishingly expanded since the apparition of High Occupancy Vehicle lanes (HOVs) on US highways, our paper studied the way America is developing these special “public transportation” services to bring home some of the US best practices. Thanks for all I learned there at that time…

A subject I am now really interested in is the development of shared-ride airport-to-city shuttles. The example of SuperShuttle is a model of efficiency and is not a really expanded transportation solution in France. Since Paris commuter rail network links the city and the airport, the need of such shared-ride taxis may not be obvious. However, low-cost airlines are usually flying from smaller airports, usually not accessible by (efficient) public transportation services… Their use being more and more frequent for short/cheap leisure trips and sometimes even business flights, door-to-door shared-ride taxis may become the good and low-priced solution for home-to-airport trips in France and… in Europe?

References

Study: DESIDERIO (M), GAUTHIER (N), Les transports à la demande aux Etats-Unis, Washington, DC, Mission économique, 2005 – 87 p., tabl., bibliogr., websites
- Download the report here (French)
- See references here
- Other references available in the report’s bibliography
Report: Report 119: Improving ADA Complementary Paratransit Demand Estimation, 2007.
APTA, 2007 Public Transportation Fact Book. Statistical data about public transportation in the United States: here