Combining the Planning Strategies into an Effective Process

In each of the preceding case studies, coordination has succeeded through the use of one or more of the seven planning strategies examined. While each strategy has been discussed separately, it can be maintained that the agencies involved have incorporated all seven planning strategies in one form or another to achieve coordination. The intent of this report is to illustrate how each of these various strategies might fit into a flexible regional transportation planning process to address the challenge of improving transportation access through coordination. For additional information about combining the planning strategies into an effective process, please see "Planning Guidelines for Coordinated State and Local Specialized Transportation Services," Keys to Success: How to Make the Coordination of Transportation Services Work.¹³

In Buffalo, New York, the transit agency, in partnership with local health and human service agencies, has recently undertaken a redesign of their existing system and services. Through a re-orientation of their system and greater coordination with local agencies, the transit agency hopes to increase their ridership by attracting a new client base while providing a cost-effective transportation alternative to health and human service agencies. The process in Buffalo illustrates how each of the seven planning strategies has played a part in their regional planning effort to develop a new, more responsive transportation system for the area.

A. Buffalo, New York - Bringing Together the Techniques for Coordinated Planning

In 1996, as part of the NFTA transit planning process, NFTA was facing a number of trends that presented a challenge to the future feasibility of their system. Sources of funding were being reduced with a drop in local mortgage taxes and declining federal operating subsidies for transit. NFTA’s traditional downtown central business district (CBD) orientation was not matched to recent trends of suburban sprawl and the shift of jobs and residences outside of the central city. Faced with these realities, NFTA decided to redesign their system by undertaking a six-step process aimed at regional coordination of transportation systems that included reaching out to the health and human service community.

The potential to realize benefits from coordination for both NFTA and health and human service agencies had already been proven. In an earlier cooperative effort, NFTA had provided the local Medicaid agency with their scheduling software. The software enabled Erie County Medicaid to decrease their costs, which were approximately $7-$8 per ride, by getting Medicaid riders out of paratransit vehicles and taxis and onto NFTA buses. NFTA benefited from increased ridership, which they could provide for the standard $1.50 fare per ride. The Erie County Medicaid agency was able to use the savings for other essential services, primarily more medical care for its clients. NFTA staff believed that there were other social service agencies in Erie County with whom they could duplicate this success. Some of those agencies knew how many people they transported, their origins and destinations, and whom they were transporting, but they did not know the times or other critical scheduling elements that NFTA could provide or the potential benefit from coordination.

The six-step system redesign process included public outreach, a technical review, market research, a coordination survey, analysis, conclusions and ideas for a new system. Contained within these six steps are all of the seven planning strategies discussed in this report. Using a flexible regional planning approach developed as part of the effort, NFTA and its partners incorporated these planning strategies, which resulted in plans for a redesigned system referred to as Hublink.

Building Partnerships. The first step in the process was public outreach. NFTA conducted approximately 90 stakeholder meetings with various neighborhood, business, and special interest groups to discuss the challenges of redesigning the transit system and to solicit stakeholder input. These stakeholder groups and the committees described below provided ongoing input and feedback throughout the system redesign process as different service alternatives and models of coordination were being considered. NFTA also established policy and technical committees, which garnered both support and active membership from many agencies in the area. Membership on the policy committee included some of the following representatives:

• Erie County Commissioner of Social Services
• Mayor of Buffalo
• Niagara County Commissioner of Social Services
• Mayor of Niagara Falls
• County Welfare to Work Coordinators
• United Way
• County Medicaid Transportation Coordinators
• Private Industry Council

The committees also included representatives of the transit union, persons with disabilities community, local businesses, the University of Buffalo, and religious groups. Staff on the technical committee was responsible for transportation planning or provision for the organizations on the policy committee.

Sharing Planning Resources. The second step, the technical review, began with an assessment of the current NFTA system and was conducted using an outside consultant working with NFTA planning staff. After undertaking a current system assessment that examined available resources, system capacities, routing, and opportunities for enhancing operations, the consultant and NFTA staff worked with members of the technical committee to examine what NFTA would consider non-traditional transit trips, such as Medicaid or welfare-to-work trips, and what might be done as part of the system redesign to provide new services to accommodate those trips. Staff from health and human service agencies provided input on their agency and clientele’s current use of the transportation system and ideas for revised or new services.

Joint Identification of Client Needs. The third step, market research, looked at the potential for attracting new riders to a redesigned and coordinated system. Market research was done in two stages. The first stage was a survey of non-users of transit from the general public that focused on identifying travel behaviors. The survey focused on identifying what characteristics of convenience would make transit an attractive alternative including greater frequency and hours of operation. The second stage targeted five major health and human service agencies and focused on what would get their clients to ride public transit. The survey was based on the customization of services to meet the demands and needs of specialized client groups.

Identification of Transportation Services, Costs and Revenues. The fourth step was the development of a coordination survey that NFTA sent out to funding agencies that bought, sold or used transportation services. Approximately 50% of the health and human service agency mailings generated responses, and those responding represented 90% of the total transportation services provided. The data gathered on the survey included some of the following elements:

• agency spending for transportation
• sources of funding for transportation
• types and number of trips provided
• number of vehicles
• hours of operations
• number of trips per day/hour
• cost per trip

NFTA worked with the technical committee to review the data and develop a measure of the cost per trip by agency, which they shared with each agency. In many cases, agencies did not have accurate estimates of their per trip costs; development of a general cost figure was often instrumental in developing further support for some kind of coordination.

Establishment of Cost Sharing Arrangements. Concurrent with and using information from the technical review and the coordination survey, NFTA worked with the technical committee and the consultant to develop a number of financial models for use in examining the feasibility of a redesigned and coordinated transportation system. The models incorporated possible funding sources from FTA, U.S. DHHS, the Department of Labor, and other sources that were currently being expended to provide transportation services by various agencies within the region. The feasibility analysis looked at whether or not this funding would be enough to strengthen a redesigned transportation system and looked at a number of different system designs. The models allowed NFTA to broach a number of different issues related to who would provide financial support for the system with their potential partners. They examined how current resources could be reallocated with the assumption that money saved through efficiencies would go toward strengthening the system rather than back to individual agencies. According to NFTA staff, this has precipitated discussions among partners as to whether or not they could actually lower traditional barriers between agencies to pool resources. While these discussions have included an assessment of real and perceived barriers to costs sharing, the issue has yet to be completely resolved.

Performance Measures. Results from the coordination survey conducted as the fourth step allowed NFTA to proceed with the fifth step, analysis of systems. Survey data revealed that health and human service agencies are spending approximately $23 million annually for transportation through 40 various programs, using 168 vehicles and providing 2.3 million trips at roughly $10 per trip. Meanwhile NFTA was spending $65 million annually using 300 buses and 27 paratransit vehicles to provide 27 million trips at roughly $2.40 per trip. These data enabled NFTA to develop per trip cost analyses for each agency as discussed earlier and to establish a performance measure for the existing transportation system as a basis for comparison with a redesigned system.

Measuring the Cost Savings and Benefits of Coordination. The final step for NFTA and its partners was to develop ideas for a redesigned system. Using information and models developed in the preceding steps, NFTA and the technical committee, with consultant assistance, examined a number of possible system configurations to assess the expense structure that would allow them to take a segment-by-segment approach to redesigning the system. The result was a concept for a six-year plan called Hublink, whereby hubs would be built in suburban locations and systems would be developed to feed those hubs, which would tie into fixed-route transit services. Hublink called for a phased approach whereby NFTA core service would be the first area of focus, followed by the development of regional connectors between suburban areas and linked to the traditional CBD, and finally, the development of a feeder system to the regional hubs.

A coordinated system would be the backbone of the Hublink concept and be designed to integrate the transportation operations of NFTA, health and human service agencies, and private transportation providers. Using the cost information developed earlier, NFTA projected that under a coordinated system, if they could increase ridership form 1.5 to 2.5 passengers per hour on only $15 million of the $23 million being spent by health and human service agencies, they could save up to $4 million through service enhancements and expense reduction that could be used to strengthen a redesigned transportation system.

While recent administrative changes at NFTA have precipitated a review of the planned system redesign, the participants in Hublink hoped that 1999/2000 would be the first full year of implementation for the Hublink system. While the results of this undertaking are not yet available, the coordination process in Buffalo has provided a model for nearby Syracuse, where the transit agency is in the process of implementing a Hublink model. Judging from the successes realized in other areas, as illustrated in the case studies throughout this report, it is likely that NFTA and all the partners in the coordinated system may realize important benefits from coordination. General public and specialized needs customers will enjoy a more flexible and responsive system, while the providers hope to realize operating efficiencies through increased ridership, greater utilization of capacity, and the elimination of redundant or under-utilized services.