Oregon Department of Transportation Electronic Fare System Peer Analysis
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Oregon Department of Transportation Electronic Fare System Peer Analysis December 19, 2016 Table of Contents Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................... 0 I. Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 2 II. Implementation Cost ........................................................................................................................ 4 III. Funding Strategies ........................................................................................................................ 6 IV. Fare Policy Goals ........................................................................................................................... 8 V. Operations Impacts ........................................................................................................................... 9 VI. Public Outreach & Customer Adoption ...................................................................................... 10 VII. Staffing ........................................................................................................................................ 12 VIII. eFare Implementation Challenges .............................................................................................. 13 IX. Regional Inter-Agency Coordination ........................................................................................... 15 X. Institutional Programs..................................................................................................................... 16 XI. Financial Settlement & Reconciliation ........................................................................................ 17 XII. Summary Observations ............................................................................................................... 18 Appendix A: Peer Agency Interviews .......................................................................................................... 20 Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Jennifer Largaespada ......................................................... 21 County Connection, Anne Muzzini .......................................................................................................... 27 Petaluma Transit, Joe Rye ....................................................................................................................... 34 Rio Vista Delta Breeze, Jim McElroy ....................................................................................................... 41 Metro, Robin O’Hara ............................................................................................................................... 47 Santa Monica Big Blue Bus, Barbara Andres ........................................................................................... 52 Prepared by CH2M December 19, 2016 Page 1 Executive Summary Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is considering the expansion of TriMet’s Hop Fastpass system in Regions 1 and 2 in northwestern Oregon. To gather lessons learned and best practices from peer transit agencies on either launching or joining an eFare system, CH2M conducted telephone interviews with six agencies from two different eFare systems, Clipper in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Transit Access Pass (TAP) in Los Angeles County: • Clipper, San Francisco Bay Area o Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) o Central Contra Costa Transit Authority (County Connection) o Petaluma Transit o Rio Vista City Transit (Rio Vista Delta Breeze) • TAP, Los Angeles County o Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) o Santa Monica Big Blue Bus (BBB) The peer reviews were structured to inform key areas of eFare system implementation and address the following topics: Implementation Cost Staffing Funding Strategies eFare Implementation Challenges Fare Policy Goals Regional Inter-Agency Coordination Operations Impacts Institutional Programs Public Outreach & Customer Adoption Financial Settlement & Reconciliation Key Findings With the following key observations about peer agencies and their implementations, ODOT can distill the most pertinent lessons and consider them in determining the future expansion of TriMet’s Hop Fastpass system. • Fare Policy : Unless mandated by a lead funding agency, agencies are not apt to change their fare policy to adapt to regional standards. All agencies interviewed believe that fare simplification is a worthy goal. • Staffing : Agencies that manage their respective eFare systems , such as Metro and MTC, experience significant growth in staffing levels while the agencies that participate see either little or no change to existing staff levels. Identifying adequate staffing levels is the biggest challenge for the smallest agencies. • Implementation Challenges : as noted by the peer review agencies o Conducting fare coordination for County Connection’s group implementation amongst four agencies o The lack of trust in Metro as the lead agency in the nascent days of TAP development o BBB’s lack of data integration with separate datasets for ridership and revenue reporting • Rio Vista: Several reasons contributed to Rio Vista’s decision to decline participation in the Clipper program. o Inadequate Rio Vista staffing for Clipper oversight o Specialized fare programs, passes, and variable fares that did not work well with Clipper fare structure o Fleet that could not accommodate full size devices on board o Operating cost relative to the city budget • Customer Adoption : The rate of adoption correlates with the presence of financial incentives and/or the elimination of alternative fare media, customer convenience, and duration of program implementation. In general, customer adoption does not increase significantly in the absence of financial incentive (e.g., discounts available to those using the eFare instrument), or the elimination of legacy fare media. • Funding : Both TAP and Clipper derived capital funding from federal sources, Surface Transportation Program (STP), Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement (CMAQ), and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). • Institutional Programs : All agencies with institutional programs waited until they had launched their eFare systems before switching their institutional programs to smart card, usually at least a year. • Regional Inter-Agency Coordination : TAP and Clipper hold regional meetings on a regular basis to obtain approval and buy in from participating agencies on current and future operational tasks. Prepared by CH2M December 19, 2016 Page 1 I. Introduction Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) is considering the expansion of TriMet’s Hop Fastpass system in Regions 1 and 2 in northwestern Oregon. To gather lessons learned and best practices from peer transit agencies on either launching or joining an eFare system, CH2M interviewed six agencies from two different eFare systems, Clipper in San Francisco Bay Area, and Transit Access Pass (TAP) in Los Angeles County. CH2M interviewed four agencies from the Clipper program and two agencies from the TAP program. The agencies interviewed include: • Clipper, San Francisco Bay Area o Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) o County Connection o Petaluma Transit o Rio Vista City Transit, Rio Vista Delta Breeze (Rio Vista) • TAP, Los Angeles County o Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) o Santa Monica Big Blue Bus (BBB) All agencies except for one, MTC, operate transit service. MTC is responsible for funding and operating the Clipper program and provides coordination between the 22 agencies that participate in the program. Similar to MTC, Metro in Los Angeles also is responsible for the funding and operations of the TAP program but operates the majority of transit service in the region. Rio Vista City Transit that operates Delta Breeze service is the one agency interviewed that did not implement Clipper on its system. Rio Vista was slated to join the Clipper program as part of a group implementation with MTC funding but later decided to opt out of the program due to projected high cost of operations from adding additional staff. County Connection and Petaluma Transit are unique cases as each agency joined Clipper as part of a group implementation, as mandated by MTC. County Connection joined the Clipper system as part of a group of four transit agencies collectively called East Bay group. Petaluma Transit joined the Clipper system as part of a group of two transit agencies called 101 Corridor group. The interviewed agencies represent a diverse array of transit service from the large regional service provider, Metro, to the small local service provided by Petaluma Transit. Table 1 includes information on the scale of the respective eFare systems, the size of each of the transit agencies, and provides a comparable Oregon agency that is similar in size. Prepared by CH2M December 19, 2016 Page 2 Table 1: Peer Agencies Selected for Review Number of Comparable Number of Annual Program Participating Agency Interviewed Oregon Agency Vehicles Ridership Agencies MTC TriMet N/A 240 million County Connection SKT Cherriots 117 3.5 million Petaluma Transit Wilsonville 20 385,000 Clipper 22 Rio Vista Delta Breeze ODOT 5 12,500 Columbia Gorge Metro N/A 2,700 480 million TAP 26 Santa Monica Big Blue Lane Transit 200 18.9 million Bus District Source: Ridership data is from NTD