Date: December 1, 2018
Author(s): Melissa Sather
Abstract
Transit ridership across the country has been falling since 2014. With fewer riders, agencies receive less fare revenue and are forced to find ways to maintain service levels with fewer operating resources. Rather than resorting to cutting service, agencies are beginning to explore creative approaches to operate service more cost-effectively. As ridehailing has transformed the way people move around cities over the past decade, transit agencies have begun to partner with companies such as Uber and Lyft to provide trips in areas that are difficult to serve with traditional fixed-route transit. Through such partnerships, agencies agree to subsidize ridehail trips rather than operate service themselves, a more cost-effective way to pay for trips only when there is demand for service while reducing fleet maintenance costs. Riders benefit from the flexibility of on-demand, door-to-door service. Using lessons learned from existing pilot programs around the country, a graduate capstone study at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs focused on how the Riverside Transit Agency (RTA) of Riverside County, California, could establish such partnerships within its service area to maintain service coverage at a lower cost.
About the Project
As part of the city’s Vision Zero policy goal put forth by Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2015 to eliminate traffic related deaths on city streets, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) has reconfigured a number of stretches of roadway in the city, removing lanes and installing what are commonly known as “road diets.” While numerous studies have shown road diets can greatly reduce the number and severity of collisions, especially for pedestrians and cyclists, the public response to many of the changes implemented in Los Angeles has been quite negative. This negative response has largely centered on claims of large increases in congestion and travel times along the streets where the LADOT has removed lanes.To examine this issue the research team will survey existing literature on road diets and their congestion impacts, analyze before and after LADOT daily traffic volume data for a number of street segments where the city installed road diets and nearby parallel segments where no change was made, and observe current conditions of ten intersections within the selected street segments to assess potential ongoing delay and congestion in the study corridors.