Expanding Service Learning Models in Transportation

This OTREC education (first) and research (second) proposal will link experiential education with local transportation planning through a collaborative partnership between the University of Oregon and the Lane Transit District. The Community Planning Workshop (CPW) is an experiential learning program affiliated with the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon. CPW has engaged students in applied research for Oregon communities for more than 30 years. This proposal would direct CPW’s nationally recognized service-learning program toward a transportation related project by evaluating the Lane Transit District’s (LTD) Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) service, one of the nation’s…

This OTREC education (first) and research (second) proposal will link experiential education with local transportation planning through a collaborative partnership between the University of Oregon and the Lane Transit District. The Community Planning Workshop (CPW) is an experiential learning program affiliated with the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon. CPW has engaged students in applied research for Oregon communities for more than 30 years. This proposal would direct CPW’s nationally recognized service-learning program toward a transportation related project by evaluating the Lane Transit District’s (LTD) Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) service, one of the nation’s only cities designated to pilot this new transit technology.

In 2007, LTD opened a Bus Rapid Transit line between Eugene and Springfield called EmX (Emerald Express). BRT is simultaneously an important advance and a compromise in transit planning. It tries to deliver most of the benefits of fixed-rail, surface transit systems (streetcar and light rail) at a lower cost. Lower cost is possible because the existing street grid can often be used without much modification during construction or operation, and the expense of rails and overhead power is avoided.

BRT has been very successful in denser cities like Bogotá, Quito, Curitiba, and Ottawa. In the U.S. only a few systems exist (including Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and Boston), but the Federal Transit Administration has begun to support and promote such systems—several areas across the country are pursuing funding BRT project development. The LTD BRT is not only one of the country’s newest, but is also the most full-featured implementation to date (use of exclusive right of way, transit signal priority, two-door boarding, special branding, etc.). A natural experiment is in process: BRT is fareless in its initial phase, but will probably charge fares in the future, which allows some evaluation of the effects of fares on ridership. In addition, it is operating in a much smaller metropolitan area than other existing systems. These attributes make it potentially a very useful case study for dozens of similar-sized metropolitan areas considering BRT as part of their transportation systems.

CPW, in partnership with the University of Oregon and the Lane Transit District (LTD), proposes to engage a team of graduate students enrolled in the Community planning Workshop program to evaluate LTD’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system. The evaluation will address both process and outcomes. The focus of the evaluation will be ex post (looking backward to compare past expectations to what has happened to date) rather than ex ante (looking forward to forecast how BRT is likely to perform in the future). It will include the following elements: (1) development of a rigorous evaluation methodology; (2) a comparison of expected performance (on multiple measures) to actual performance to date; (3) a rider profile and evaluation of rider characteristics in the context of future BRT corridors, and (4) an evaluation of actual and expected effects BRT will have on development within BRT corridors. And of course, by including a student team in the final research design and analysis of the data, as well as engaging with the primary agencies responsible for the development and implementation of the EmX system, students will be gaining a hands-on education in transportation analysis that they otherwise would not have.

The project scope will consist of developing a BRT evaluation by surveying BRT riders, facilitating a steering committee process, developing an evaluation framework for land use impacts, and conducting background and best practice research.  CPW will apply principles of experiential learning found in the literature and document the experiential learning processes used for the LTD BRT evaluation.
This project will result in new partnerships for CPW (with LTD and the City’s of Springfield and Eugene) as well as new curriculum that focuses on transportation evaluation. It will also develop and refine curriculum for a course offered at the 400/500 level titled “Land Use and Transportation.” The course will be taught by Terry Moore, an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Planning, Public Policy & Management at the University of Oregon and a vice-president with ECONorthwest an economics and land use consulting firm. Moore is the primary author of the APA book titled “The Land Use-Transportation Connection.”