Mobility on Demand (MOD) Demonstration: Dallas Area Rapid Transit Authority (DART) First and Last Mile Solution Evaluation Report

Elliot Martin, Adam Stocker, Adam Cohen and Susan Shaheen

Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings from Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley

Abstract: The Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstration Program provides a venue through which integrated MOD concepts and strategies, supported through local partnerships, are demonstrated in real-world settings. For the 11 MOD Sandbox Demonstration projects, an independent evaluation was conducted that includes an analysis of project impacts from performance measures provided by the project partners and an assessment of the business models used. This document presents the results from the independent evaluation of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) First and Last Mile Solution MOD Sandbox Demonstration project. Evaluated were hypotheses that explored project impacts on travel behavior, user experiences, first and last mile to public transit accessibility, service quality for passengers with disabilities, and costs. The project improved first and last mile connectivity to DART transit, increased satisfaction among DART transit users, enhanced service for passengers with disabilities, and increased the geographic scope of DART transit service in the Plano area. In addition, wait and travel times for passengers with and without disabilities reflected similar distributions. The subsidy per rider of GoLink services was lower than the low-ridership fixed-route transit services that it replaced in Plano, but it was not lower than the subsidy for DART fixed-route transit in the overall Dallas region. DART project team members were interviewed to better understand challenges, barriers, successes, and broader lessons learned from the project, representing agency personnel from the offices of Innovation, Service Planning, Scheduling, Paratransit Operations, and Marketing. Lessons learned revealed the importance of having pre-planned, ready-to-go projects with committed partners, flexible contracting terms, metrics for adjusting spatial and temporal service coverage (including terminating service if appropriate), vehicle right-sizing, and understanding customer needs.

Keywords: Engineering; Mobility on Demand; MOD; sandbox; shared mobility; mobility as a service; independent evaluation; public transit; first and last mile; microtransit; transportation network companies; TNC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-06-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-isf, nep-ppm, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/7hz5r5zr.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt7hz5r5zr

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings from Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff (help@escholarship.org).