Impacts of funding and allocation changes on rural transit in Texas

Funding for Rural Transit Districts (RTDs) in Texas has gone through notable change since 2003. First, the Federal Transit Administration increased funding for non-urbanized (rural) areas under the provisions of the Safe Accountable Flexible and Efficiency Transportation Equity Act – a Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). At the same time, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) implemented a revised “needs and performance” based method for allocating both federal and state funds among RTDs effective fiscal year 2005. The revised method for allocating funds resulted in some RTDs receiving less federal and state funds, while others received more funds. The 2010 Census will introduce another change in funding due to changes in RTD population and land area, the two “needs” factors in the revised method for allocating funds. New and expanding urbanized areas will have an impact on adjacent RTDs. The population in rural areas near the border or surrounding metropolitan areas will increase faster relative to other parts of Texas. One of the objectives of this research was to document the impact of the change in allocation of federal and state funds on service levels and ridership. A second objective was to assess whether the relative changes in federal and state funding have affected the ability of RTDs to provide local share match for federal funds. This information will help to understand how changes in federal and state funding have affected transit in rural Texas and will contribute to a discussion by stakeholders of possible revisions to the TxDOT funding formula based on the outcomes of Census 2010

Impacts of Funding and Allocation Changes on Rural Transit in Texas: Final Report

This report discusses the notable change that the Funding for Rural Transit Districts (RTDs) in Texas has gone through since 2003

Evaluating the use of transfers for improving demand responsive systems adopting zoning strategies

"In this report researchers consider a variation of the regular demand responsive transit system that adopts the transfer practice to reduce operating costs.Researchers evaluated the effect of different transfer operating policies by developing a simulation model of several plausible scenarios. The results indicate that zoning with transfer can provide significant benefits paratransit operations that are managing zoning structure.

Facilitating creation of transit system technology user groups

Report..

Texas transit leadership initiative

Report on the Texas Transit Leadership Initiative which researched national leadership development programs and developed a longterm leadership development program for use by the transit industry in Texas

Technical report (Texas Transportation Institute)

"Rural and small urban transit systems in Texas will become even more important with predicted changes in population trends. Rural demographic trends indicate growth in the number of persons age 65 and over coupled with a decrease in population density. Small urban area trends indicate substantial population growth and broadened geographic boundaries, yet resources to provide rural and small urban transit are limited. Therefore, transit managers find it is increasingly important to maximize service efficiency and effectiveness. The purpose of this research was to identify peer groups, performance benchmarks, and strategies used by successful transit providers to achieve high performance. The research project identifies peer groups based on the transit environment within which each agency operates, so that agencies can be compared to other operators who face similar environments. Peer group effectiveness and efficiency performance are examined within and between rural and urban peer groups, and high performers are identified for case studies. Through the case studies, key attributes are identified for achieving high operating efficiency and/or effectiveness. Performance strategies are categorized to provide transit providers with transferrable information to improve performance and increase the return on transit investment.

A Toolkit for Reporting Rural and Specialized Transit Data—Making Transit Count

This digest presents the results of National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Project 20-65, Task 28, An Analysis of Automated Transit Data Collection and Analysis Processes in State DOT Transit Units and a Toolkit for Next Generation Transit Data Analysis. The objective of this research was to identify the data reporting requirements of state departments of transportation (DOTs) to meet the Federal Transit Administration\u27s (FTA\u27s) requirements, and develop a set of tools to assist state DOTs and individual rural and specialized transit providers in data collection, analysis, management, and reporting. The objective was also to conduct an analysis of automated transit data collection and reporting processes in state DOT transit units. Tasks included a review of FTA\u27s requirements for rural and specialized transit data reporting; issuance of a questionnaire to DOTs to learn about data reporting collection processes and needs; and the preparation of mini-case studies to highlight DOT automated transit data collection and reporting processes