Rural Public Transportation Brokerage in Illinois

摘要

The benefits of interagency coordination of public and human service transportation have been recognized and promoted by federal, state and local governments. Potential coordination benefits can be realized by centralizing critical functions including planning, public information, call-intake, certification, eligibility records, reservations, trip allocation, scheduling, and transport, as well as overcoming the barriers related to statutory and legal difficulties, administrative, institutional, and perceptual issues, system operations and user or client restrictions. One of the ways this can be realized is by brokering public transportation services. Brokerage is one form of coordination in which a centralized authority provides transit services either directly or indirectly, through one or more transit providers. Brokerage has the potential to reduce administrative costs, support the centralization of data sources and integration of all community transportation services, reduce transportation costs and enhance client services. This study examined the potential for brokerage of paratransit operations in the State of Illinois.