ModalChoice.com
Data Mapping creates visual representations of transit and paratransit service characteristics.
Paratransit operations in existence today have grown up merely responding to random requests for service from people who signed up for it, rather than by directing customers to the best options that are available to them. Mostly, passengers do not reason out that if they use a bus, they could get where they need to go without the need for making a reservation one or more days in advance. Buses followed streets and routes that were planned around traffic conditions and population densities. Paratransit was supposed to be an alternative for people who could not get on the bus because there was no lift, or the sidewalks were not ramped to the street or were non-existent. However, today many types of eligible paratransit riders use the vans services and never considered, tried or used a fixed-route bus or train.
Across the country, tens of thousands of persons with disabilities have become accustomed to "calling for the van" without ever considering that a bus could get them to their destination. Overloaded transit systems, put themselves in jeopardy by denying services to customers who they themselves determined as being in need of paratransit services. Denying an eligible passenger his/her requested paratransit trip may be a violation of his/her Civil Rights.
Read through the following checklist of questions and ask yourself what the answers are:
- Do you know where your trip denials are? Are they concentrated in one or more specific geographic area, time period or day of week? Do they constitute a pattern of practice?
- Are many of your ADA paratransit trips actually picked up or dropped off outside the ¾ mile ADA service area?
- Could some of your eligible riders actually take the bus for some or all their travel needs?
- Could some of your paratransit obligations be handled by a modified routing of a fixed-route bus? Could you better serve an area by putting a bus route where the paratransit demand is high?
- Do you know which neighborhoods have high densities of eligible riders?
- Where are your paratransit and transit trip generators located?
- Do many of your customers pass up alternative places of equal or greater desirability to go to more distant places because they do not know where theses better places are?
- Can you improve fixed-route accessibility in one or more areas and reduce the demand on the paratransit system?
Knowing the answers to these questions and seeing the data graphically represented can help the decision-making process. The following maps serve that purpose.
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These maps show sample data for illustrative purposes. Above, the blue stars represent the locations where passengers go and the green blobs are Dialysis units. Note that most of the destinations are the main streets. At the below are a mappings of all Doctor offices addresses and the location of Restaurants whether served by paratransit trips or not. Your trip data can be used to create these and many other illustrations to assist with policy making and service planning. |
| Notice how the Doctor offices are clustered in several specific areas. What is more important is that there are many neighborhoods where the residents have to travel great distances to see a Doctor. |  |
| This map shows all the listed restaurants in the Raliegh area. The vast majority of them are located along the arterial highways. A public transit fixed-route bus user is unlikely to travel to the NE quadrant to eat a meal when there are dozens of right near by. This is especially true when the bus trip takes 1.5 to 2 hours one-way. |  |
Many transit systems and paratransit systems already use a computerized data handling application. ModalChoice can use your own data files (dBASE, Excel, Access, Text, etc.) to create maps depicting your service area. This can be accomplished at a much lower cost to you that by hiring a transit planner on an annual salary and outfitting him/her with all of the computer hardware, software and databases necessary to do the same thing. And it will not consume the valuable time of your present staff, who are already too busy, to consider adding GIS and mapping duties to their job descriptions.
The 2000 Census identified how the population demographics changed since 1990. We can show you the neighborhoods where you are most likely to have populations such as "persons 60 and older", where "Group Homes for persons with disabilities" are, and locations where there are high concentrations of children of any age bracket 1-5, 6-10, 11-15 years, etc.
Maps depicting your data by Zipcode, census area, service areas, jurisdiction can be made.
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Population figures from the 1990 and 2000 Census files can be overlaid as layers on each colored area to show the demographics of that area. Census tract level data can also be shown. |
Vector maps showing the relationships between trip Origins and Destinations are helpful in determining where your passengers travel. The line graphs at the right and below shows one particular transit system's total daily trips and the breakdown for onlt the Dialysis trips. One can see that there is little or no planning for which person travels to which Dialysis Unit. Therefore many patients travel excessive distances causing discomfort, inconvenience and possibly even health problems. Any group of passengers or trip purpose can be mapped to see the Big Picture. Manually routed vehicles can have their daily tours plotted to see how well they were scheduled. |
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The analysis that has been applied to the Dialysis trips can also be applied to any trip purpose, any day of the week, any time period of the service day. Mapping of trips makes the evaluation of service coordination easier to understand and present for decision making purposes. Several service providers' data can be combined and color coded to show who is doing what service and where. |
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Let ModalChoice help with your transit planning or BE your planner. ModalChoice has broadband Internet access for the emailing of data files, Internet faxing to help keep phone bills low. Private, secure communication can be set up to ensure customer privacy.
You can have your choice of color printed reports, MS Word documents with color maps and charts, and PowerPoint Presentations to distribute and/or present at public hearings, board meetings and planning sessions. The consultants can be scheduled to present the results in person, via telephone conference or in a multi-media video-taped format. We specialize in low cost solutions that any system can afford.
With ModalChoice you get the benefits of many minds and many years of experience instead of just one staff person. Data mapping is just one of the services we can provide to your transit agency. Additional information about the consultants is available on the website www.ModalChoice.com. Below are a few more areas of expertise that our consultants have.
- Paratransit eligibility process creation/monitoring
- Bus operator and paratransit driver training
- ADA Policy making, public hearings and focus groups
- Customer satisfaction surveys
- Consumer transitioning education for fixed-route services
- ADA Audit preparations
- Service planning
- Innovative service delivery
- Fixed-route performance on ADA issues
- Fixed-route and paratransit contracting
- Capital acquisitions
Telephone or email to discuss what we can do for you. There is no obligation.
On-going driver and staff training is essential to maintaining a quality transportation service. Changing attitudes of the public contribute to the obsolescence of training curricula that was administered years ago. How many times have you heard such statements as "our handicaps prefer to ride in the front of the vehicle" or "our patients are just happy to get any trips we can give to them." Persons with disabilities are just like everyone else. They want reliable transportation to work, school, shopping, movies, etc. They want to be treated respectfully and like everyone else.
Myths abound surrounding what persons with disabilities actually want. "They won't ride buses even when we put lifts on them." There are many people who would, if given the opportunity and all the barriers, both physical and attitudinal, were removed. Driver attitudes and behaviors toward persons with disabilities make a great difference in the numbers of people who use buses. Discouraging just one person with a disability from using the bus costs your paratransit system between $5,000 and $10,000 per year for every year that person is your daily paratransit customer.
Invest the first year cost of that one person in driver and staff training. Invest it in bus use training. Invest it in identifying where your highest demands for paratransit service are and target those areas with better bus service. ModalChoice can improve your services and help you track the cost-benefits of every job we do for you.
Robert Carlson, Principal
"Better Mobility Through Educated Choices"