Developing a Comprehensive Service Strategy to Meet a Range of Suburban Travel Needs

摘要

The document reports on a study to develop a methodology allowing transit operators to identify promising non-traditional options for their individual community needs and to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the methods, and, to illustrate how the method would actually be implemented, focusing on a 60 square mile highly suburban area in Austin, Texas. The report first describes the 'new' suburban environment in which public transit operators must provide service, showing how the increasing suburbanization of jobs and homes has created both work and non-work trips not easily served by traditional transit. The report next describes prototypes of non-traditional services that have been developed and explains the results of a survey of 22 mid-sized cities. The report next describes a six-step service and cost effectiveness methodology, explaining the logic of the process and the type and source of required data. Finally the report describes how the six-step methodology was applied in Austin, Texas.