CHAPTER 2
Research Approach: Engagement
Engagement with the intercity bus industry was a key component of this project and has accordingly occurred in different ways throughout its lifespan. This chapter details the engagement carried out by the research team, summarizes its results, and discusses challenges of soliciting participation from the industry and what this means for the usefulness of the ICBA as a resource.
Process
The first step in this project’s engagement process was for the research team to compile a list of intercity bus carriers to target and to implement a dashboard to keep track of participation status in the ICBA. This list of carriers was developed primarily by RSG, in collaboration with research team members Joe Schwieterman and Brian Antolin, Terry Cordell of Transcor Data Services, Brandon Buchanan of the American Bus Association, and members of the research panel. This effort used a past list of intercity carriers compiled by the AIBRA as a foundation and augmented it with new carriers and removed those no longer in service; this step was especially relevant given the changes the industry experienced during and since the COVID-19 pandemic.
While working to develop this list, the research team leveraged their own knowledge, research produced by and conducted at De Paul University’s Chaddick Institute (with which Joe Schwieterman is affiliated), and information found online to fill in the database of carriers with contact information needed for later outreach. In total, 126 carriers were selected for inclusion. Each carrier identified was also assigned a category to allow for a tailored approach to engagement; these categories included the following:
- Carriers interlined with Greyhound
- Independent carriers
- Publicly run carriers requiring contact
- Publicly run carriers with publicly available GTFS
- Carriers primarily serving Spanish-speaking populations
In addition, the research team identified 110 transit agencies providing at least one long-distance trip that could be considered intercity service. Because of FTA reporting requirements and the benefits of having services show up in trip planners, many of these agencies do have GTFS developed and available to the public. Some of these carriers have been included in the current map maintained by BTS where the research team considered it appropriate to do so, especially when an area was underrepresented on the current iteration of the map.
The list of carriers and some select transit agencies was used to populate a dashboard within the TRANSIT-data-tools platform, which will be discussed in further detail in Chapter 3. This
allowed the research team to keep track of the status of each carrier’s participation (i.e., whether they had submitted GTFS) and to organize various versions of carriers’ GTFS feeds as updates were made. Through this dashboard, the research team could also validate feeds for fatal errors before forwarding to BTS for inclusion.
The research team decided who to include and collected all necessary contact information. The next step was to perform outreach to individual carriers and the larger industry. The approach to engagement was multipronged, taking advantage of industry connections and leveraging a variety of methods to reach interested parties. This was an effort without a set endpoint and would be helpful to continue through the lifespan of the ICBA project, by whichever organization is selected to inherit the responsibilities of maintaining this resource. Elements of the engagement approach included the following:
- Indirect outreach:
- – Project websites and online MOU
- – Webinars
- – Newsletters
- – Conferences, meetings, and other forums
- Direct outreach:
- – Emails and phone calls to known carrier contacts
- – Email outreach to carriers without known contacts, but for whom an email address could be found
- – Mailed outreach to DOTs and carriers for whom email did not work
- – Coordination with ticketing service providers as a potential way to obtain data from carriers
Memorandum of Understanding and Project Website
As one component of indirect outreach, the research team published a website with information about the project (https://rsginc.com/busatlas/); this included a description of the work being performed as part of the project and its aims, contact information for the email inbox maintained by the research team at RSG, and a link to the MOU. While not included directly within the site, links also directed anyone interested to a current version of the ICBA map hosted by BTS.
The research team and research panel agreed it would be important to create an MOU that communicated to carriers what participation in the ICBA effort entailed and detailed how data would be shared, thereby making clear that any data collected would not be used for commercial purposes. This MOU was programmed into a web form (linked to the website highlighted in the previous paragraph), allowing for carriers to easily complete it and agree to its conditions and for the research team to collect and securely store all information shared in a centralized location.
In combination, these items lent additional legitimacy to the effort to collect data from carriers and helped to assuage worries concerning data privacy on the part of carriers by clearly showing and explaining what information would be collected, shared, and eventually used.
Responsible for hosting the current version of the ICBA map and for previous iterations of the program, BTS created its own project website (https://bts.gov/intercity-busing/bus-atlas). This website consists of a few pages, including a brief description of the project and its purpose, a guide to participation, a registration form for the MOU (the web form has been closed for the time being due to security concerns, but carriers are directed to contact BTS directly at nicba@dot.gov), and a page with links to a current map and route and stops data.
Conferences, Trade Shows, Webinars, and Mailed Outreach
To raise awareness about the ICBA effort, the research team shared presentations at conferences and trade shows and during conference calls, including the following:
- United Motor Coach Association, Orlando, Florida, April 2021
- Rural Transit Assistance Program (RTAP) National Webinar, Spring 2021
- National Bus Traffic Association, brief update on webinar meeting, Spring 2021
- National Bus Traffic Association, Annual Meeting, in Grapevine, Florida, January 7, 2022
- American Bus Association, Marketplace 2022, January 9, 2022
- Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting (two updates provided to TRB committees), January 11 and 12, 2022
- National Bus Traffic Association, January 2023
Because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, some of these conferences were held virtually, and this may have impacted the success of outreach efforts conducted, with less informal engagement possible in a virtual forum. All conferences, however, were valuable in providing project status updates to the industry and making carriers aware of this effort.
Additional webinars were held between the research team and stakeholders, primarily state DOTs. Letters were mailed to relevant contacts at each state DOT and some select intercity bus carriers. The letters described the project and what participation in it entailed and included invitations to a series of webinars to learn more about the project and ask questions of the research team.
In all, around 20 participants joined a webinar session, including state DOT and industry representatives. In addition to being generally helpful in raising awareness of the ICBA project, discussions with those stakeholders present provided the team with useful information about what carriers and routes were missing from the previous map and which carriers could be targeted as high priorities
Newsletter
As a part of his role as director of the Chaddick Institute at DePaul University, research team member Joe Schwieterman and colleagues regularly publish a newsletter and other public-facing materials on the intercity bus industry. The September 2021 edition of the Intercity Bus E-News newsletter, with a distribution of around 1,100 people, included information about the ICBA project and a link to one of the webinar sessions.
Direct Outreach
In addition to the previously mentioned methods of engagement, the research team contacted all targeted carriers that had email addresses available. The team drafted emails corresponding to the different categories assigned to carriers (e.g., independent bus lines, interlining carriers) and differentiated based on the assumed GTFS status of a carrier. For carriers believed to have already developed GTFS, the research team shared information and solicited participation; however, assistance was offered to carriers that the research team did not think possessed GTFS.
This email outreach was conducted across the project’s lifetime, but in two more or less distinct phases. The first phase of outreach was conducted toward the beginning of the project and was intended to spread awareness of the project, obtain MOU submissions, and obtain data from those who had completed an MOU. Approximately 400 emails (including initial emails, reminders, and other follow-up contact) were sent in this phase, directly leading to many of the MOU submissions obtained by the research team.
In addition to email outreach and in-person discussions at industry forums, the research team conducted approximately 40 phone calls with carriers in this phase to obtain their cooperation.
Each targeted carrier was contacted up to three times as a standard—usually employing multiple different methods (i.e., phone, email, in-person discussion)—with some contacted more frequently. For carriers that did not respond after three attempts, the research team paused outreach with the hope that there might be more interest after the atlas further developed.
More outreach was conducted later in the life of the project, largely overlapping temporally with the project’s own second phase. One primary focus of this phase of direct outreach was placed on carriers that had submitted an MOU and possessed GTFS data but from whom data had not been obtained. Since these carriers were already aware of the project, had GTFS developed already, and had at least nominally consented to sharing data, the research team hoped that data could be obtained from them in a more straightforward manner to fill in the current map produced by BTS.
This phase of outreach was tightly linked to the research team’s plans to offer technical assistance to interested carriers. The research team not only targeted carriers that had already submitted an MOU and had developed GTFS but also focused on those carriers that had not already developed GTFS, whether or not they had submitted an MOU already. Particular attention at this stage was given to carriers identified as being able to fill in areas of the current map with little existing service, namely the Upper Plains, Mountain West, and Alaska. After introducing the project and including links to important information and to the current map, the research team invited targeted carriers to participate in training sessions with research team members at Arcadis.
Two training sessions were held between carriers, RSG and Arcadis, with three carriers participating. The first was held on January 20, 2023, and the second was held on March 29, 2023. Each session lasted about an hour, with representatives from Arcadis and RSG guiding participants through how to use the platform to input their stops, routes, schedules, and other information. One of these sessions was recorded for future use—for distribution and for development of future training materials.
Research team members continued to offer technical assistance after the conclusion of these sessions; team members at RSG reached out to the three carriers periodically to check on their status and ensure assistance was not needed, and team members at Arcadis provided any necessary technical expertise. Participating carriers reached out with questions, including about the process of getting GTFS integrated into trip planning programs like Google Maps and the Transit app. As of the writing of this report, none of the three carriers had completed their GTFS feeds.
Obtaining GTFS from Repositories
In addition to obtaining feeds from carriers directly, the research team found that GTFS for many carriers was available in public repositories online. The largest sources of this information were sites like transit.land (https://www.transit.land/) and OpenMobilityData (https://openmobilitydata.org/), but while searching for certain carriers feeds, the team also found that a small number of states maintained their own repositories for state-supported services: California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, and Oregon. The team was able to collect many feeds from these sources, including many publicly supported intercity bus services like Colorado’s Bustang, Oregon’s POINT, and Virginia’s The Virginia Breeze, as well as several rural transit carriers with intercity services.
Data Creation
Because many carriers did not participate in the ICBA, the research team decided to develop a small number of GTFS feeds on its own, something discussed as a possibility earlier in the
project. The team targeted carriers identified as potential “gap fillers” earlier in the engagement process for this treatment, given their ability to expand the geographic breadth of the map. Not all carriers provided enough information publicly for the team to develop GTFS feeds. GTFS feeds were constructed only for those with public schedules (and one carrier that sent the team their schedule directly) and adequately specific stop location information and were further prioritized by the size of their networks and how well they filled the gaps in the current map identified earlier. Feeds were created for the following carriers:
- Badger Bus Lines
- Mountain States Express
- North Central Montana Transit
- Northern Transit Interlocal
- Northfield Lines Metro Express
- Panhandle Trails
- Red Coach
Results
As discussed previously, after examining and removing inactive entries from the former AIBRA list of intercity carriers, conducting its own research, and consulting with industry contacts and research panel members, the research team selected 126 bona fide intercity carriers for inclusion. An additional 110 rural transit carriers with long-distance services were also identified and considered for potential inclusion later in the project, dependent on internal discussions and the success of the team in soliciting participation from the intercity bus industry.
After engagement over the course of most of the project’s lifespan, the research team compiled GTFS from 49 carriers, all of which have been sent to BTS for inclusion in the current version of the atlas. While many independent carriers’ feeds have not been collected, the research team obtained feeds from some of the nation’s largest intercity carriers, including Amtrak Thruway, Greyhound Lines, and FlixBus. Because of the operating model of Amtrak Thruway, several other carriers’ services (e.g., Travel Washington’s Apple, Dungeness, Gold, and Grape lines and Maryland’s BayRunner Shuttle service) are included in whole or in part in its data, meaning that the network displayed in the current map is more extensive than the number of carriers for which data has been collected may suggest.
Challenges with Participation
Data Gaps
Although the research team has created a strong framework for future advancement of the ICBA effort by another entity—including compiling an updated inventory of intercity carriers, collecting associated contact information, spreading awareness of the project’s existence, developing technical tools and guides, and collecting several key GTFS feeds—there still exist several bare areas in the data collected and added to the current map. Around one-third of the number of carriers targeted ended up participating, falling to less than one-quarter if rural carriers are considered on equal footing with intercity services.
Certain areas of the country are well-covered in the current map; regions like the New England states, California, Colorado, and Oregon have multiple carriers represented and are densely covered with different services. In other areas, only one carrier may have services represented, e.g., Jefferson Lines in parts of the Upper Plains. Efforts were made to conduct more intensive engagement among carriers in underrepresented regions, extending to the creation of feeds for some select carriers, but even with this additional focus, large geographic gaps remain.
Another challenge is that other categories remain underrepresented and less well understood, namely those carriers serving certain demographic groups. Several factors may contribute to this, but operators’ concerns and sensitivities surrounding the privacy of customers may drive much of this.
Higher levels of participation from the industry would have been helpful for the overall research effort. The inheritor of the ICBA may want to consider potential strategies to more effectively reach carriers.
Continued Utility of the ICBA
While the ICBA is capable of being used for analyses as outlined in the user guides produced for the project, limitations in the breadth of carrier coverage impact the utility of the current map in its primary and auxiliary purposes. For smaller scale analyses, when the stakeholders involved are explicitly aware of the services in their region of study that are not represented, the ICBA may still be able to serve as a foundation for examination of the transportation options available. This is especially true for regions that are more densely covered in the current map. It is with larger scale analyses, however, that the ICBA’s utility is most limited. Without a more complete universe of carriers included in the map (or at least an understanding of what is missing in a region), it is difficult to accurately evaluate service, accessibility, and other important planning metrics, as discussed in the User Guide for State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Entities produced as part of phase 2 of this project.
In the pursuit of its primary purpose, to simply visualize where service does and does not exist, the current map at its current level of completion can still be of use. Unlike rail transportation, local transit, air travel, and private automobiles, intercity buses are unrepresented by any specific agency under the U.S. DOT. Without an equivalent modal agency, centralized and regular data collection for the intercity bus industry, as occurs with other transportation modes, historically has been understudied in proportion to its role within the country’s transportation network. As such, even an incomplete map represents an improvement to the ability to understand the breadth of intercity bus service in the United States and potentially the rest of North America. This information can be used to inform stakeholders like local and state planners, political officials, and community organizations of the organizations serving their regions and help them to understand which communities may remain un- or underserved. The research team also hopes that such a map can be used to encourage unrepresented carriers to participate.