An increasing amount of deficit and lack of public funds to makeup a financial shortfall forced the knoxville transit authority of knoxville, tennessee, to eliminate the sunday bus service operated by k-trans. The rationale for the elimination was that the cost-effectiveness of k-trans service was lowest on sundays, in coparison with any other day of the week. Before sunday service was discontinued, k-trans was accommodating about 750 trips (boardings) on an averagesunday, whereas the number of trips on an average weekday was about15, 000. After the decision to discontinue sunday bus service was made public, the management of two regional shopping centers contactedk-trans and expressed their interest in sponsoring sunday bus service to each mall for 12 sundays during and after the november-december holiday season. Both routes were designed as loops to serve several housing complexes for low-income families and the elderly and several student housing units, as well as the respective malls and downtown area. The two distinct issues addressed are the effectiveness ofproviding privately funded transit service targeted for a selected market in an environment where transit ridership generally has been low and the effectiveness of a targeted service focusing on a few major generators in replacing an existing transit service with areawide coverage. The latter issue is of particular interest to planners. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1221, Research in bus antransit operations.
Abstract