Laying the Groundwork for New Connections Among Transit Providers
In alignment with national policy directives, transit and planning agencies across the country are deploying regional-level Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technology to accomodate projected population growth and increased transportation service needs. The majority of U.S. regions have developed ITS Architectures, or planning frameworks, for the broad range of public and private stakeholders in each region. The ITS architectures lay out guidance on how the agencies collaborate to develop, apply, and connect various transportation technologies to create agency-wide and regional systems. As the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) facilitates coordination and integration of the goals and activities of diverse transit stakeholders, they have engaged the Volpe Center to provide key technical support.
David Jackson, Project Manager, and Charlotte Burger, Benjamin Cotton, and Luis Mejias of the Multimodal Systems Research and Analysis COI, and Gina Filosa, Alex Linthicum, and Terry Regan of Volpe Center contractor MacroSys, are reviewing and cataloguing data from over 3,100 transit service providers they have identified to date. The team is also developing a concise report with recommendations for how the FTA regional offices can further support the effective interlinking of these numerous and varied transit services.
At the end of this project, the FTA will disseminate Volpe-compiled booklets that list the public transportation service providers by country, state, and region, the applicable ITS Architectures, and a summary of the level of involvement and use of the Regional ITS Architectures. The Volpe team will also present the results of the review to the transit industry via forums with the American Public Transportation Association and the Community Transportation Association of America.
With the cataloguing of public transportation agencies operating in the U.S., the FTA can better serve agencies seeking the appropriate type and level of technologies to become more accessible, integrated, efficient, and flexible. By disseminating comprehensive and organized agency data, the FTA has the potential to directly and indirectly inspire innovative partnerships as agencies form new connections.
The review of transit agencies that serve the public has been made possible by the contributions of the project sponsor, FTA’s Office of Mobility Innovation, and from the input from FTA Regional Offices, Federal Highway Administration Divisional Offices, and representatives from transit agencies, metropolitan planning organizations, and State Departments of Transportation.
