Public Transit in University Communities: A Literature Review

North Dakota State University (NDSU) is a vibrant, growing, research university. As such, it serves as a major economic catalyst for its community and the state. However, the benefits of this growth also bring challenges in the form of increased demand for classroom, office, research, and housing facilities and the attendant increases in parking demand. NDSU, like other universities, is meeting these demands by building more facilities on the main Fargo campus, and by expanding into other areas such as the research park adjacent to campus and downtown. Further, the university is building new facilities that in some cases displace existing parking, and in all cases create demand for more parking.

One way universities can address this need for more parking and improve access to university facilities is to start or expand on-campus and regional transit services. By reducing reliance on the private automobile, university planners can develop the campus more intensively, and can reduce the cost of providing additional parking and roadway capacity. Further, universities are better able to manage land use, preserve open spaces, and maintain or improve the ambiance of the campus environment. The surrounding community also benefits from better transit services if these services result in less congestion on surrounding streets, and by lowering the demand for university-related parking on town streets and in non-university parking facilities. Furthermore, better transit services increase the housing, shopping, and employment options available to university-related individuals.

Another recent trend is for a regional transit system to provide transit services for student, faculty, and staff at a number of universities within an urban area. This trend has been evident in large urban areas in an attempt to reduce auto travel and the attendant air pollution, but is also found in smaller communities such as Fargo-Moorhead where several campuses are served by a transit system. Institutions in the Fargo-Moorhead area that are interested in improved transit services include NDSU. MSUM, and Concordia College.

As a starting point to this campus transit study, we conducted a literature review of the state of the practice in university transportation today, especially as it relates to services, policies, and issues similar to those of the Fargo-Moorhead areas. The literature on campus transit services includes several surveys of the current status of campus transit in the United States, case studies and descriptions of individual systems, and cross-cutting studies that examine issues such as unlimited access transit, transit and parking, and service design. The first part of this literature review identifies key documents and resources that were identified through this review the second part of this chapter discusses key findings on topics of importance to the Fargo-Moorhead area.

Overview Information on Campus Transit Systems

Interest in transit solutions for college and university communities has increased greatly within the past 10 years. This interest has led to the publication of a number of overview studies and surveys of campus transit, as well as information on specific systems and issues. One sign of this increased activity has been the attention given to campus transit services by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), the national trade association representing urban and rural bus and rail systems. APTA has sponsored three speciality conferences on campus transit (1998, 2000, 2002), In addition, APTA has created a special page of links to university transit web sites (13) that lists more than 80 campus transit services operated by universities. In addition, campus transit services are provided by regional transit services and information on these systems can be obtained through another APTA link that lists local and state transit organizations (14).

In addition to this online information about specific transit systems, several studies in the past few years have surveyed and synthesized information about a number of the more fully developed campus transit operations. One of the earliest surveys of campus transit systems was prepared by the Mid-Atlantic Universities Transportation Center in 1991 for a Transportation Research Board subcommittee on campus transit (6). This inventory of campus transit systems identified nearly 200 university-based transit services that ranged from a one or two-van late night escort services to very large bus systems that served both the campus and the surround region. Information from this inventory was used as the starting point for perhaps the most comprehensive of these overview surveys, the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis of Transit Practice that was published in 2001.(7) This report summarizes the findings of a survey of 30 campus transit systems and presents data on their operation. The systems surveyed provided public transportation to universities with enrollments ranging from 11,000 to nearly 50,000 students. Further, these systems operated between 7 and 95 buses.

The TCRP synthesis also addresses the state of the practice on a number of topics including unlimited-access transit systems, organizational issues including governance and management of campus transit operations, operational details such as the use of students as employees of campus transit services, and how transit can be part of a broader transportation demand management program. Information presented in this synthesis will be reported in more detail later in this chapter in the sections on policy and operating issues.

In addition to the TCRP synthesis, two other recent multi-system survey reports are those prepared by the University of Colorado (10) and the University of California - Los Angeles (2). Both reported on the increasingly widespread adoption of unlimited-access transit services, i.e., those public transit services that provided prepaid, unlimited use transit service to students, and/or faculty and staff.

Another policy topic addressed by several sources is the role of public transit services in a broader transportation demand management strategy for university communities. A 10-year old study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (5)(8) reports on universities that tie parking, land-use, and transit policies together to reduce auto travel and increase transit, bike, and walking choices. More recent case studies of universities that have adopted aggressive transportation-demand management strategies include Cornell University and its innovative parking fee structure program (3) and the University of Washington's comprehensive UPASS program in Seattle that includes unlimited- access transit and incentives to choose non-auto modes of travel (11, 12).

Finally, case studies describing the history and current status of several older well-established systems have been reported in the literature. These case studies include information on the systems at Iowa State University (1), the University of Illinois - Champaign-Urbana (9), and the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee (8).

The remainder of this chapter provides background from the literature and current state of the practice concerning issues of importance to the development of university-related transit in the Fargo-Moorhead areas. Four topics to be discussed in more detail include the organization and governance of transit systems serving university communities, how to pay for campus transit, the role of transit in a comprehensive demand-management strategy and finally, a discussion of the major trend in campus transit toward unlimited-access systems for transit services on campus and in the university community.

Governance and Operation of Campus Transit Services

One of the most difficult institutional issues to be addressed when setting up or expanding a campus transit service is the ownership, management, and governance of the transit operation. The issue is whether the university should set up a separate transit system to serve its needs or contracts with the local public transit agency. The way a particular university is organized and the governance system established to direct the transit service depend on state law, the history of town-gown relations, the relative capabilities of the university to operate a transit system versus a separate agency, and circumstances when the decisions were made. In the past, universities set up their own services because no local transit agency existed or the existing organization did not wish to provide the service. Sometimes, however, universities set up their own systems to avoid entanglements with the local community and to maintain control over the cost and quality of the transit services. For all of the reasons listed above, no single form of ownership and operation is dominant. Table 2.1 shows the results from TCRP survey and lists ownership, operation, and policy governance choices for the 30 systems that responded to the 2000 survey. As can be seen, about half of the universities own and operate their campus services, while the other half enjoy services provided by the regional system.

In cases where the transit agency is administratively and legally separate from the university, important issues of cost sharing and governance must be resolved. As can be seen from Table 2.2 data collected in the TCRP survey indicate that the most common way that universities interact with the local transit agency is through service contracts. Universities are represented by voting members at only three of the fourteen campuses which reported having transit service provided by a separate agency. However, thirteen of the fourteen say they maintain a regular dialog with the transit providers.

Universities apparently prefer to have a cordial, but nevertheless arms-length, relationship with the transit agency rather than be directly involved in guaranteeing the solvency and success of the transit system. Participation on a transit board by university officials might be construed by elected officials or members of the local community to mean that the university feels a responsibility to provide transportation, not only on campus, but perhaps in the community. University officials usually do not want to take on this additional burden.

Students are obviously a key to the success of a campus transit operation in terms of ridership, but students also play key roles in the governance of the transit systems. Two of the 30 transit systems responding to the TCRP survey are run by the student government. Furthermore, students play a key role in advocating improved transit paid through student fees. Either because of the requirements of the student fees, or because the transit agency wants the student input, students are represented on advisory boards for both university and local transit agency-operated systems. In one transit agency-run system, a student is a member of the board of directors; in three others students serve on advisory boards.

Table 2.1 Governance and Policymaking Characteristics of Campus Transit Systems Source: (7)

North Dakota State University has chosen to contract for services with Fargo-Moorhead Metropolitan Area Transit (MAT), the local transit provider, for campus services and to pay MAT for unlimited access for students on the regional service. This pattern is very common and an increasingly preferred option. Even in cases where two separate systems once existed, in the past few years several large university systems have merged with the regional system or given up the campus service to the regional provider. For example, Penn State University once operated its own on-campus services, but as part of a broader TDM program, transferred the service to the local transit provider and agreed to provide significant financial support to allow unlimited access transit on campus. Likewise, Michigan State University ceased operations of its own service and entered into a contract with the local transit provider.