Transit agencies integrate for a significant number of reasons, but the most common include the desire to improve the customer experience, accomplish more from an investment than a single agency could accomplish on its own, and reduce expenditures by eliminating duplication and improving efficiencies. This Transit Integration Manual is Volume I of TCRP Report 173: Improving Transit Integration Among Multiple Providers. Volume II: Research Report provides a significant body of knowledge about transit agency motivations for integrating, as well as challenges, and outcomes of integration eorts. The purpose of this Manual is to provide guidance to transit agencies; planning organizations; local, regional and state governments; and the array of organizations that are impacted by transit service or have a stake in the provision of transit service, based on the research presented in TCRP Report 173, Volume II. The research shows that transit integration among multiple transit providers is not necessarily easy, but it is successfully practiced in regions around North America and around the world and yields significant benefits in the communities where it occurs. These anticipated benefits have led some regions to work toward integration of services to create a more seamless system in terms of how riders pay for fares, transfer between routes, and access information about what is available. Indeed, most transit riders do not think of travel in terms of jurisdictional boundaries or agency ownership, but in terms of origins and destinations. Successful integration can create a network that feels unified to the rider. To help the reader understand how the issues discussed in this Manual have been considered and addressed in other communities, 19 examples of integration efforts are identified. These examples illustrate the experience of agencies that have sought to better coordinate their services, work cooperatively on planning or capital projects, and reduce duplicate efforts. The examples are presented in the appendix and referenced throughout this Manual. The integration experience in each of these regions varies significantly. A few of the successes grew out of informal collaboration on a wide range of topics; most were more purposeful and meant to develop a unified fare payment program, a regional brand, consolidated public information, a regionalized transit network, a multioperator intermodal center, or a fully consolidated transit operation. In each of these example communities, mapped in the figure below, integration benefits consumers and agencies alike. For example, consumers no longer pay separate or additional fares to different providers or walk from one agency’s transit center to another in Butte County, California, where several local and regional agencies consolidated as a single transit operation. Downtown Minneapolis is no longer clogged with buses from multiple providers that stop at a mix of bus stops and operate without regard to each other’s schedule. Instead, buses follow well-choreographed operating procedures on bus-only streets, using shared stops and a regional public information system. A patchwork of uniquely funded and administered transit services in the Phoenix region operate as if they were a single, unified transit operation under the Valley Metro banner. (Author/publisher)
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