National Center for Smart Growth Research Works

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21473

The National Center for Smart Growth (NCSG) works to advance the notion that research, collaboration, engagement and thoughtful policy development hold the key to a smarter and more sustainable approach to urban and regional development. NCSG is based at the University of Maryland, College Park, housed under the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, with support from the College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, the A. James Clark School of Engineering, the School of Public Policy, and the Office of the Provost.

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Author: search.filters.author.Iseki, Hiroyuki

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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Examination of Regional Transit Service Under Contracting: A Case Study in the Greater New Orleans Region
    (Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI), 2011) Iseki, Hiroyuki
    Many local governments and transit agencies in the United States face financial difficulties in providing adequate public transit service in individual systems, and in providing sufficient regional coordination to accommodate transit trips involving at least one transfer between systems. These difficulties can be attributed to the recent economic downturn, continuing withdrawal of the state and federal funds that help support local transit service, a decline in local funding for transit service in inner cities due to ongoing suburbanization, and a distribution of resources that responds to geographic equity without addressing service needs. This study examines two main research questions: (1) the effect of a “delegated management” contract on efficiency and effectiveness within a single transit system, and (2) the effects of a single private firm—contracted separately by more than one agency in the same region—on regional coordination, exploring the case in Greater New Orleans. The current situation in New Orleans exhibits two unique transit service conditions. First, New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) executed a “delegated management” contract with a multinational private firm, outsourcing more functions (e.g., management, planning, funding) to the contractor than has been typical in the U.S. Second, as the same contractor has also been contracted by another transit agency in an adjacent jurisdiction—Jefferson Transit (JeT), this firm may potentially have economic incentives to improve regional coordination, in order to increase the productivity and effectiveness of its own transit service provision. Although the limited amount of available operation and financial data has prevented us from drawing more definitive conclusions, the findings of this multifaceted study should provide valuable information on a transit service contracting approach new to the U.S.: delegated management. This study also identified a coherent set of indices with which to evaluate the regional coordination of transit service, the present status of coordination among U.S. transit agencies, and barriers that need to be resolved for regional transit coordination to be successful.
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    Thinking Outside the Bus
    (2012) Iseki, Hiroyuki; Smart, Michael; Yoh, Allison; Taylor, Brian D.
    This is a short, accessible article that provides a synopsis of findings from the research titled “Tool Development to Evaluate the Performance of Intermodal Connectivity (EPIC)” in collaboration with UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. This research has examined various factors that can substantially influence transit users’ perception of service quality at bus stops and trains stations, and also what factors transit managers think important to improve customers' satisfaction. Recently, the project has developed a tool for transit agencies to identify service quality improvements at transit facilities, which has been presented in the American Planning Association (APA) National Planning Conference in Los Angeles, April, 2012. Publications related to this research are listed under " FURTHER READING" on page 15.
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    Tool for Assessing Station Characteristics (TASC): Identifying Service Quality Improvements at Transit Stops and Stations
    (2012) Iseki, Hiroyuki
    This particular poster presentation describes a web-based analysis tool that is hosted by the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and is publicly available to transit agencies interested in identifying which service quality changes (e.g. amenities, information, lighting, etc.) to transit stops/stations are most important for improving levels of transit users’ satisfaction. This program is based on a series of research projects funded by California Department of Transportation since 2005 (see www.its.ucla.edu/research/EPIC/) in collaboration with researchers from multiple universities, including Hiroyuki Iseki from the National Center for Smart Growth. This phase of research—TASC project—is groundbreaking in that it provides planners an analysis of the relative importance of various improvements, uses community-based input, and can be applied at the level of individual stops/stations, across a group of stops/stations, or across the transit system as a whole. The program provides a graphical representation of users’ levels of satisfaction juxtaposed on top of the importance of various service qualities. In short, it provides a clear indication of how best to invest increasingly scarce transit resources to improve customer satisfaction in attributes that matter to transit customers. The poster focuses on a description of the process for using the tool – downloading the survey forms, conducting a user survey, uploading survey results, and downloading analysis results – and highlights examples of how the analysis can be performed at different levels of analysis to meet different needs.