Flexible Transit Service

TCRP Report 140: A Guide for Planning and Operating Flexible Public Transportation Services, a product of the Transit Cooperative Research Program, gets into the weeds on what constitutes a non-fixed route, flexible transit service, why communities and regions choose them, the relative costs and how they operate either on their own or as supplements to traditional fixed route and ADA paratransit service.

Warning: The report I am recommending is dull, sometimes painfully so. However, the case studies are informative and cover a wide variety of types of communities.

The authors noted their surprise that so many communities have flexible fixed-route service, ranging from service very similar to a traditional route to service almost indistinguishable from demand-response ADA paratransit. When reading the case studies, many of which featured flexible service in places that have chosen not to have conventional transit service and mandatory complementary ADA paratransit service, I started to wonder about the future of conventional transit in rural and cash-strapped communities.

Those interviewed for the report were frank that flexible service is for transportation-challenged people and that those served better not be too concerned about timing and being prompt. Explicitly stated were cautionary notes that this type of service is not ideal for commuters and students, who need to be somewhere on time pretty much each day.

What I found intriguing were the case studies, the tales of places trying to provide transportation that is very different from quality transit-rich urban rapid transit. Getting people out of cars was clearly not the goal. There are some tales of lack of community resources and others of filling in gaps in regions that have traditional transit, but also include far flung communities or where there are transportation needs at hours of low demand.

The report, though dull, paints a picture worth looking at.