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Several years ago, the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) endeavored to describe how the transit agency of the future might be organized and how it might function—to craft a new paradigm for public transportation service design and delivery. The project asked three questions:

* Why is fundamental change in the industry necessary?
* What should be the nature and direction of change?
* How will fundamental change be carried out?

The answers revealed a clear operational definition of “mobility management” as a new, overarching responsibility—one that requires fundamental changes in the organization and business practices of transit and allied organizations.

Rather than focusing on the use of a single agency’s assets—such as vehicles, facilities, personnel, and funding streams—mobility management shifts the strategic focus to ensuring the quality of the travel experience, regardless of which assets are used.

Fundamental changes in other industries provide lessons for shouldering the responsibility for managing mobility. Many have been documented in a series of TCRP reports, concluding with Report 97, Emerging New Paradigms: A Guide to Fundamental Change in Local Public Transportation Organizations.

In 2008, APTA embraced the concept of mobility management in its TransitVision 2050 document, noting that the industry must evolve to meet critical national goals and the needs of individual travelers. The APTA vision saw the evolution of transit agencies as they assume the role of “integrating the full range of mobility services.”

Today this vision is coming into sharper focus. Mobility management is emerging as a critical, strategic public responsibility that transit agencies are adapting to take—presenting challenges of managing mobility for the regions they serve.

Through a joint effort, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and APTA are seeking to advance mobility management as a core public responsibility in today’s transportation arena. The effort will provide a variety of resources, including descriptions of where breakthroughs are occurring and the practical steps being taken to shoulder the responsibility for managing mobility.

Collaborating Outside the Traditional Transit Arena:
Sharing the Responsibility for Managing Mobility
Collaboration and integration of assets, services, and resources at the provider level lie at the heart of efforts to better manage mobility. Indeed, collaborative arrangements among transit agencies, providers, and health and human services agencies responsible for client transportation are leading to considerable progress.

The efforts to partner among service providers can be frustrating, however, and success can be limited by the actions—or inaction—of other agencies, organizations, and interests outside the provider/operator community. As a result, the FTA/APTA joint effort is reaching out to audiences and actors outside the transit provider community to explore how to better manage mobility.

Following is a brief summary of areas and participants that can be central in this effort. In virtually all cases, the outreach effort should be targeted to both elected policy makers and professionals, public and private, charged with carrying out relevant policies.

Decisions about Transportation Infrastructure
Historically, we have assigned responsibility for various portions of the transportation network to different agencies at different levels of government, and often they act relatively independently. Managing mobility more effectively will require more aggressive outreach and collaboration on planning, policy, investment, and funding decisions affecting construction, maintenance, management, and related standards for streets and highways, parking, rail and airport access, intermodal facilities, and pedestrian and other non-motorized infrastructure.

Emerging information technologies provide the capability to navigate the transportation network to heighten the quality of the travel experience while taking advantage of the characteristics of each component. Processes and procedures that frustrate travelers should be examined continuously by responsible agencies.
 
Decisions about Economic Development, Land Use and Growth Management
Mobility needs result not only from trip origins and destinations, but also from development regulations. The land use-transportation linkage is broadly recognized today, and there is an ever-growing catalogue of policies, projects, regulatory breakthroughs, and management techniques that can serve to expand mobility and make more effective use of our transportation network while enhancing our communities environmentally and economically.

Despite obvious and well-documented relationships, we continue to struggle to ensure that community development, land use, and transportation decisions are mutually beneficial. The roles of private developers acting under the authority of local governments and the requirements applied by financial and lending agencies should be explored.

Decisions by Funding and Financing Institutions
The battle for public (and private) resources to support private sector investment and enhanced public services is increasingly competitive. Managing mobility more effectively will require that transit professionals understand the shifting conditions for use of limited resources and the procedures that guide the availability and flow of funds.

Eligibility for and emerging flexibility in government funding programs is followed closely, but constraints remain, including flows of public funds across such broad program categories as health, housing, and transportation. Financial institutions often dictate transportation-related requirements, e.g., parking, as conditions for development and mortgage loans. Insurance companies restrict coverage for service providers, such as volunteer drivers, which represents a significant potential resource in managing mobility. Each of these institutions and related agencies should be part of the dialogue on how to do this better.

Decisions in Provision of Utility Infrastructure
Availability, standards, and costs in the provision of infrastructure other than transportation affect land use patterns and, as a consequence, access and mobility. Yet public and private utilities maintain policies and procedures largely independent from transportation policymaking.

The organizations responsible for policies, standards, and pricing for provision of water, sewer, gas, and electric services ideally should begin acting in support of enhanced access and mobility, except where overt public safety concerns might dictate otherwise.

Environmental Management Decisions
Beyond management of water resources and waste water, policy, investment, and management of air and other natural resources in the public sector has an obvious direct impact on the provision of transportation infrastructure and services, most often through enforcement and oversight of overlapping local, state, and federal laws and regulations.

A sustainable future, including sustainable mobility, will depend on ensuring that mobility managers and their partners have a comprehensive understanding of measures that protect the environment, including options that can maintain the balance between environmental protection and enhanced mobility. The agencies, institutions, and interests that serve to protect the environment should be advocates for better management of mobility.

Decisions in Other Public Service Sectors
There are also other arenas in which policy, law, and regulation might better reinforce the goals of mobility management. Among the most important are pricing, taxation, and labor relations.

Conclusion
Full value from the efforts of transportation service providers to manage mobility—transit agencies, health and human service providers (for-profit and non-profit), taxis, volunteer organizations—is not likely to be achieved without mutually reinforcing actions by a host of agencies and organizations outside the provider community.

As the role and responsibility for mobility management in a region becomes better defined, collaboration with agencies and organizations may help systems exceed initial goals and serve as a model for mobility management efforts elsewhere.

To share examples of how your organization works with other mobility partners in your region, contact Kylah Hynes.

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