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FOREWORD By Staff Transportation Research Board PREFACE Transit administrators, engineers, and researchers often face problems for which in- formation already exists, either in documented form or as undocumented experience and practice. This information may be fragmented, scattered, and unevaluated. As a conse- quence, full knowledge of what has been learned about a problem may not be brought to bear on its solution. Costly research findings may go unused, valuable experience may be overlooked, and due consideration may not be given to recommended practices for solv- ing or alleviating the problem. There is information on nearly every subject of concern to the transit industry. Much of it derives from research or from the work of practitioners faced with problems in their day-to-day work. To provide a systematic means for assembling and evaluating such use- ful information and to make it available to the entire transit community, the Transit Co- operative Research Program Oversight and Project Selection (TOPS) Committee author- ized the Transportation Research Board to undertake a continuing study. This study, TCRP Project J-7, âSynthesis of Information Related to Transit Problems,â searches out and synthesizes useful knowledge from all available sources and prepares concise, docu- mented reports on specific topics. Reports from this endeavor constitute a TCRP report series, Synthesis of Transit Practice. The synthesis series reports on current knowledge and practice, in a compact format, without the detailed directions usually found in handbooks or design manuals. Each re- port in the series provides a compendium of the best knowledge available on those meas- ures found to be the most successful in resolving specific problems. This synthesis will be of interest to transit practitioners, transportation professionals, and social service providers, as well as to private and nonprofit organizations providing demand-responsive transit (DRT) service. It explores the experiences of selected transit agencies, four contract service providers, and four software vendors, focusing on current practice, successful implementation of computer-aided scheduling and dispatch (CASD) systems, and impediments to success. The report summarizes the state-of-the-practice experiences of a selected group of transit agencies about the implementation and use of CASD systems employed to provide Americans with Disabilities Act and other DRT ser- vices. In addition, it identifies much of the past and ongoing research pertaining to the topic. This synthesis report from the Transportation Research Board includes a literature re- view, supplemented by survey responses from three types of sources (public transit agen- cies, software vendors, and private service carriers with contracts with transit agencies to operate DRT services). Case studies from two transit agencies (Charlotte Area Transit System and New Jersey Transit) that have recently implemented entirely new CASD sys- tems are included. A panel of experts in the subject area guided the work of organizing and evaluating the collected data and reviewed the final synthesis report. A consultant was engaged to collect and synthesize the information and to write the report. Both the consultant and the members of the oversight panel are acknowledged on the title page. This synthesis is an immediately useful document that records the practices that were acceptable within the limitations of the knowledge available at the time of its preparation. As progress in re- search and practice continues, new knowledge will be added to that now at hand.
