APTA Sustainability/Operations Planning and Scheduling Workshop
Who Gets Service? — Mon. Aug. 19, 2024 | 10:30 AM
Lacy Bell, Moderator
Allocating limited transit resources is a core responsibility in service planning. This session will feature a range of presentations exploring the factors influencing the service plan. Explore Sacramento Regional Transit’s experience providing contracted service and the industry implications of this type of service. Houston METRO will share their practices and lessons learned with inter-local agreements to serve neighboring areas. San Francisco Muni presents how it uses its updated Service Equity Strategy to respond to growing service needs without a growing budget by making cost-neutral decisions. Lastly, Albany’s CDTA and Creighton-Manning will share analytical strategies for planning and implementing Albany’s new and high priority Purple Line BRT. This session aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted approaches transit agencies use to determine who gets what service and why.
Buidling a Team — Mon. Aug. 19, 2024 | 1:45 PM
Lacy Bell, Panelist
Great transit service develops in response to feedback from critical stakeholders. In this session, we hear four narratives that focus on listening and working together. Explore NICE Bus's customer-centric pyramid framework, prioritizing rider satisfaction through foundational values, data, and reframing the concept of a “customer.” Learn from MDOT MTA's Inreach program, which employs dedicated staff to engage frontline employees, planners, and executive level staff to enhance service delivery and maintain quality relationships. Discover insights from experts who have worked on both the agency and the consultant sides regarding how to optimize the RFP/Q processes to foster clear communication and build productive client-consultant relationships. Lastly, delve into WMATA’s effort to implement headway-based service management in their rail network and the decision to fallback to conventional service management with responsibilities distributed across the organization.
Changing Travel Patterns — Tues. Aug. 20, 2024 | 8:00 AM
Thomas Wittmann, Panelist
Service planning requires continuous reassessment of local ridership trends to ensure service meets the needs of the community it serves. This session will feature presentations on four topics: The recovery of weekend ridership at several agencies and the results of their decisions to increase weekend service, Maryland MTA’s strategic adjustments in commuter bus services amid budget constraints, TransLink's rebalance of service in Metro Vancouver, and Denton, TX’s shift to microtransit and development of their methodology for Title VI assessment of microtransit service. Attendees will gain insights into the methodologies, challenges, and successes of these agencies in responding to changing travel patterns to enhance mobility and equity.
Lacy is a transit planning professional specializing in ensuring that capital investments support long-term operations and passenger needs. She has experience in BRT and light rail capital project development and implementation, bus and rail operations modeling, multimodal traffic engineering, O&M cost forecasting, and fare policy.
Prior to joining Nelson\Nygaard she led the operations start-up of Sound Transit's Stride BRT program, including the systems elements such as CAD/AVL, transit signal priority, and fare collection. Her portfolio includes significant experience on capital project integration to existing transit networks both at Sound Transit on the East Link project as well as at RTD in Denver.
Thomas has nearly 18 years of experience in transportation planning, specializing in transit operations and capital planning. He has worked with rural, small urban, and large systems throughout the country on a variety of studies and plans, including dozens of comprehensive operational analyses, development plans, and optimization studies. He has studied and designed numerous park-and-ride operations and transit centers. His service redesigns have consistently led to higher ridership with no increases in cost, and his long-range transit planning efforts have led to additional transit funding. Thomas is particularly adept at leading the public processes necessary for a successful service change implementation; he has developed an iterative process that incorporates community needs and builds consensus.