Evaluation of Mobility on Demand Pilot Found That the Subscription-Based Transit Hailing Service Delivered Competitive Wait Times Compared to Fixed-Route Transit Headways, with Forty-One Percent of Trips Arriving on or before the Requested Time.

Activity and Survey Data Used to Study Impacts of an On-Demand Mobility Service in Tucson, Arizona on Travel Behavior, User Experience, and Costs.

Date Posted
12/12/2022
Identifier
2022-B01697
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Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstration: Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) of Pima County Adaptive Mobility with Reliability and Efficiency (AMORE) Evaluation Report

Summary Information

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA)’s Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstrations aimed to test strategies for a multimodal, integrated, automated, accessible, and connected transportation system with personalized mobility. One demonstration led by the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) of Pima County, Arizona’s Adaptive Mobility with Reliability and Efficiency (AMORE) pilot project, transformed an existing fixed-route transit service into an integrated multimodal, community circulation-based mobility service with multiple options. The goal of the AMORE project was to enhance mobility access to work and other needs, reduce personal car dependency, integrate attributes of multiple emerging mobility services and technologies, and deliver additional travel options for residents. The pilot operated from October 2018 to May 2019 in southeast Tucson’s Rita Ranch area, which was chosen as it was a low-density community reliant on personal automobiles and with limited fixed-route transit service. The project intended to explore the pilot’s impact on travel behavior, user experiences, and costs using activity and survey data.

Methodology

The independent evaluation team defined a logic model to describe project goals and link to corresponding evaluation hypotheses, performance metrics, and data sources, including system activity data, user surveys, and interviews. The hypotheses and performance metrics are summarized in Table 1. The data used to evaluate the system performance included activity data, survey data, and stakeholder interview data.

Table 1: Evaluation Performance Metrics for AMORE Project

Project Goal

Hypothesis

Performance Metric

Increase diversity of use of mobility options

The average number of modes that travelers use increases.

Number of mobility options used by commuters

Increase public transportation ridership within the greater Rita Ranch area.

Public transportation ridership, including service offerings that are part of program, will increase due to AMORE

Public transit ridership

Increase in mobility for older adults and those with no access to vehicles.

Older adults and those with no access to a vehicle find that AMORE provides affordable mobility options for work or social activities that they would otherwise forgo or defer.

Reported mobility (and perception of mobility options) among described demographics

Increase in carpooling by parents when driving minors as a result of AMORE.

Parents carpool more when driving minors as a result of AMORE.

Reported carpooling patterns by parents of minors before and after AMORE implementation

Reduce personal car dependency for travel.

Users of AMORE will reduce their use of personal automobiles.

Before and after use of personal automobiles by trips

Reduce overall Vehicle-Miles Traveled (VMT) by segment / use case.

VMT will fall among users of AMORE (by use case/segment: older adults, school trips, commuters).

Measured VMT of travel activity (by use case/segment: older adults, school trips, commuters); before and after reports of VMT in survey

Increase affordable options for MOD services.

AMORE provides MOD services that lower per-trip cost to operator and provide additional affordable options for consumers.

Difference in average cost per trip and per passenger mile of AMORE and comparable transit and Single Occupancy Vehicle trips

Increase carpooling

AMORE increases carpooling among Tucson residents.

Reported carpooling from survey and activity data (if known)

Improve access to mobility options through integration of multiple services into a single app.

The integration of two MOD mobility options (subscription-based transit-hailing and community-based social-carpooling) into a single app increases the use of both services.

Usage of MOD mobility options

Produce lessons learned through stakeholder interviews.

The process of deploying the project will produce lessons learned and recommendations for future research and deployment.

Qualitative documentation from stakeholder interviews

Findings

  • The subscription-based transit hailing service generally delivered wait times that were reasonable when compared with fixed-route transit headways. The average wait time (from the requested pick-up time) by the subscription-based transit hailing service was three minutes, when excluding erroneous outliers. The wait time for 41 percent of the trips was zero minutes, including cases where the vehicle arrived early.
  • Measured VMT, based on the activity data analysis, did not decrease as a result of AMORE. Based on the activity data, the use of personal automobiles either did not change or increased in the project. The low-density environment of the pilot service area was determined to be challenging for a project of this type due to low transit ridership and congestion.
  • The overall AMORE project costs included research, development, and administration, which dominated the per-trip operational costs since the number of users and trips provided were limited. The evaluation team considered it unlikely that the services were lower in cost to the operator than conventional demand-response costs, even when excluding the development costs. While the pilot project was not cost-effective in providing mobility services for the agency, for many users, trips were provided for free and resulted in an affordable option for travelers.
  • Due to the limited sample size from two surveys, the trip and retrospective survey, and low amount of user data, some hypotheses could not be analyzed conclusively.

Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstration: Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) of Pima County Adaptive Mobility with Reliability and Efficiency (AMORE) Evaluation Report

Mobility on Demand (MOD) Sandbox Demonstration: Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) of Pima County Adaptive Mobility with Reliability and Efficiency (AMORE) Evaluation Report
Source Publication Date
10/01/2021
Author
Martin, Elliot; Adam Cohen; Stephen Wong; Sena Soysal; Susan Shaheen; and Les Brown
Publisher
Prepared by Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) for U.S. Department of Transportation
Other Reference Number
FTA Report No. 0202
Goal Areas
Results Type
Deployment Locations