IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i4p2222-d501859.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Planning for the First and Last Mile: A Review of Practices at Selected Transit Agencies in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Hossain Mohiuddin

    (Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA)

Abstract

A transit trip involves travel to and from transit stops or stations. The quality of what are commonly known as first and last mile connections (regardless of their length) can have an important impact on transit ridership. Transit agencies throughout the world are developing innovative approaches to improving first and last mile connections, for example, by partnering with ride-hailing and other emerging mobility services. A small but growing number of transit agencies in the U.S. have adopted first and last mile (FLM) plans with the goal of increasing ridership. As this is a relatively new practice by transit agencies, a review of these plans can inform other transit agencies and assist them in preparing their own. Four FLM plans were selected from diverse geographic contexts for review: Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro), Riverside (CA) Transit Agency (RTA), and Denver Regional Transit District (RTD), and City of Richmond, CA. Based on the literature, we developed a framework with an emphasis on transportation equity to examine these plans. We identified five common approaches to addressing the FLM issue: spatial gap analysis with a focus on socio-demographics and locational characteristics, incorporation of emerging mobility services, innovative funding approaches for plan implementation, equity and transportation remedies for marginalized communities, and development of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructures surrounding transit stations. Strategies in three of the plans are aligned with regional goals for emissions reductions. LA Metro and Riverside Transit incorporate detailed design guidelines for the improvement of transit stations. As these plans are still relatively new, it will take time to evaluate their impact on ridership and their communities’ overall transit experience.

Suggested Citation

  • Hossain Mohiuddin, 2021. "Planning for the First and Last Mile: A Review of Practices at Selected Transit Agencies in the United States," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-20, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:4:p:2222-:d:501859
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/2222/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/2222/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karner, Alex & Niemeier, Deb, 2013. "Civil rights guidance and equity analysis methods for regional transportation plans: a critical review of literature and practice," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 126-134.
    2. Manaugh, Kevin & Badami, Madhav G. & El-Geneidy, Ahmed M., 2015. "Integrating social equity into urban transportation planning: A critical evaluation of equity objectives and measures in transportation plans in North America," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 167-176.
    3. Boisjoly, Geneviève & Grisé, Emily & Maguire, Meadhbh & Veillette, Marie-Pier & Deboosere, Robbin & Berrebi, Emma & El-Geneidy, Ahmed, 2018. "Invest in the ride: A 14 year longitudinal analysis of the determinants of public transport ridership in 25 North American cities," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 434-445.
    4. Chowdhury, Subeh & Hadas, Yuval & Gonzalez, Vicente A. & Schot, Bart, 2018. "Public transport users' and policy makers' perceptions of integrated public transport systems," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 75-83.
    5. Miguel Padeiro & Ana Louro & Nuno Marques da Costa, 2019. "Transit-oriented development and gentrification: a systematic review," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(6), pages 733-754, November.
    6. Taylor, Brian D & Garrett, Mark, 1999. "Reconsidering Social Equity in Public Transit," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt2bm7b38n, University of California Transportation Center.
    7. Chase Billingham & Barry Bluestone & Stephanie Pollack, 2010. "Maintaining diversity in America's transit-rich neighborhoods: tools for equitable neighborhood change," New England Community Developments, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, pages 1-6.
    8. Clewlow, Regina R. & Mishra, Gouri S., 2017. "Disruptive Transportation: The Adoption, Utilization, and Impacts of Ride-Hailing in the United States," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt82w2z91j, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    9. Dillon T. Fitch & Hossain Mohiuddin & Susan L. Handy, 2021. "Examining the Effects of the Sacramento Dockless E-Bike Share on Bicycling and Driving," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-26, January.
    10. Pike, Susan PhD & Kazemian, Sara, 2020. "Why Do Some Transit Agencies Form Shared-Use Mobility Partnerships while Others Do Not?," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt3jt98530, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    11. Fitch, Dillon PhD & Mohiuddin, Hossain & Handy, Susan PhD, 2020. "Investigating the Influence of Dockless Electric Bike-share on Travel Behavior, Attitudes, Health, and Equity," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt2x53m37z, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    12. Hall, Jonathan D. & Palsson, Craig & Price, Joseph, 2018. "Is Uber a substitute or complement for public transit?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 36-50.
    13. Doran, Alexandra & El-Geneidy, Ahmed & Manaugh, Kevin, 2021. "The pursuit of cycling equity: A review of Canadian transport plans," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    14. Shaheen, Susan PhD & Chan, Nelson, 2016. "Mobility and the Sharing Economy: Potential to Overcome First- and Last-Mile Public Transit Connections," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt8042k3d7, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    15. Casey Dawkins & Rolf Moeckel, 2016. "Transit-Induced Gentrification: Who Will Stay, and Who Will Go?," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(4-5), pages 801-818, September.
    16. Circella, Giovanni & Tiedeman, Kate & Handy, Susan & Alemi, Farzad & Mokhtarian, Patricia, 2016. "What Affects Millennials’ Mobility? Part I: Investigating the Environmental Concerns, Lifestyles, Mobility-Related Attitudes and Adoption of Technology of Young Adults in California," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt6wm51523, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    17. Ralph Buehler & John Pucher, 2012. "Demand for Public Transport in Germany and the USA: An Analysis of Rider Characteristics," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(5), pages 541-567, June.
    18. Boarnet, Marlon G. & Giuliano, Genevieve & Hou, Yuting & Shin, Eun Jin, 2017. "First/last mile transit access as an equity planning issue," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 296-310.
    19. Fitch, Dillon & Mohiuddin, Hossain & Handy, Susan, 2020. "Electric Bike-share in the Sacramento Region is Replacing Car Trips and Supporting More Favorable Attitudes Towards Bicycling," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt8gm3w9qp, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chrysa Vizmpa & George Botzoris & Panagiotis Lemonakis & Athanasios Galanis, 2023. "Micromobility in Urban Trail Paths: Expanding and Strengthening the Planning of 15-Minute Cities," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-22, December.
    2. Nur Oktaviani Widiastuti & Muhammad Zudhy Irawan, 2024. "Ride-Hailing Preferences for First- and Last-Mile Connectivity at Intercity Transit Hubs," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(7), pages 1-20, April.
    3. Hossain Mohiuddin & Md Musfiqur Rahman Bhuiya & Shaila Jamal & Zhi Chen, 2022. "Exploring the Choice of Bicycling and Walking in Rajshahi, Bangladesh: An Application of Integrated Choice and Latent Variable (ICLV) Models," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-20, November.
    4. Mohiuddin, Hossain & Fitch-Polse, Dillon T. & Handy, Susan L., 2023. "Does bike-share enhance transport equity? Evidence from the Sacramento, California region," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    5. Mohiuddin, Hossain & Fitch, Dillon & Handy, Susan, 2022. "Examining Market Segmentation to Increase Bike-Share Use: The Case of the Greater Sacramento Region," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt71h6g0td, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    6. Rui Yao & Kenan Zhang, 2023. "How would mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) platform survive as an intermediary? From the viewpoint of stability in many-to-many matching," Papers 2310.08285, arXiv.org.
    7. Wei Li & Chanam Lee & Samuel D. Towne & Sinan Zhong & Jiahe Bian & Hanwool Lee & Sungmin Lee & Xuemei Zhu & Youngre Noh & Yang Song & Marcia G. Ory, 2024. "Building Sustainable and Connected Communities by Addressing Public Transportation’s First-Mile Problem: Insights from a Stated Preference Survey in El Paso, Texas," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(5), pages 1-23, February.
    8. Olga Tzanni & Paraskevas Nikolaou & Stella Giannakopoulou & Apostolos Arvanitis & Socrates Basbas, 2022. "Social Dimensions of Spatial Justice in the Use of the Public Transport System in Thessaloniki, Greece," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-26, November.
    9. Valeska V. Geldres-Weiss & Nathaniel P. Massa & Joaquín Monreal-Pérez, 2021. "Export Promotion Agencies’ Lived Turmoil, Response and Strategies in COVID-19 Times," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-24, November.
    10. Fitch-Polse, Dillon T & Mohiuddin, Hossain & Fukushige, Tatsuya & Darr, Justin & Agarwal, Swati, 2023. "American Micromobility Panel: Part 1," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt8bs198sz, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Soria, Jason & Stathopoulos, Amanda, 2021. "Investigating socio-spatial differences between solo ridehailing and pooled rides in diverse communities," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    2. Zgheib, Najib & Abou-Zeid, Maya & Kaysi, Isam, 2020. "Modeling demand for ridesourcing as feeder for high capacity mass transit systems with an application to the planned Beirut BRT," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 70-91.
    3. Shadi O. Tehrani & Shuling J. Wu & Jennifer D. Roberts, 2019. "The Color of Health: Residential Segregation, Light Rail Transit Developments, and Gentrification in the United States," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(19), pages 1-19, September.
    4. Xiaoxia Dong & Erick Guerra & Ricardo A. Daziano, 2022. "Impact of TNC on travel behavior and mode choice: a comparative analysis of Boston and Philadelphia," Transportation, Springer, vol. 49(6), pages 1577-1597, December.
    5. Linovski, Orly & Baker, Dwayne Marshall & Manaugh, Kevin, 2018. "Equity in practice? Evaluations of equity in planning for bus rapid transit," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 75-87.
    6. Lee, Yongsung & Lee, Bumsoo, 2022. "What’s eating public transit in the United States? Reasons for declining transit ridership in the 2010s," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 126-143.
    7. Prateek Bansal & Akanksha Sinha & Rubal Dua & Ricardo Daziano, 2019. "Eliciting Preferences of Ridehailing Users and Drivers: Evidence from the United States," Papers 1904.06695, arXiv.org.
    8. Wenting Li & Amer Shalaby & Khandker Nurul Habib, 2022. "Exploring the correlation between ride-hailing and multimodal transit ridership in toronto," Transportation, Springer, vol. 49(3), pages 765-789, June.
    9. Allen, Jeff & Farber, Steven, 2019. "Sizing up transport poverty: A national scale accounting of low-income households suffering from inaccessibility in Canada, and what to do about it," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 214-223.
    10. Allen, Jeff & Farber, Steven, 2020. "Planning transport for social inclusion: An accessibility-activity participation approach," SocArXiv ap7wh, Center for Open Science.
    11. Michael Manville & Brian D. Taylor & Evelyn Blumenberg & Andrew Schouten, 2023. "Vehicle access and falling transit ridership: evidence from Southern California," Transportation, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 303-329, February.
    12. Oke, Jimi B. & Akkinepally, Arun Prakash & Chen, Siyu & Xie, Yifei & Aboutaleb, Youssef M. & Azevedo, Carlos Lima & Zegras, P. Christopher & Ferreira, Joseph & Ben-Akiva, Moshe, 2020. "Evaluating the systemic effects of automated mobility-on-demand services via large-scale agent-based simulation of auto-dependent prototype cities," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 98-126.
    13. Simon J. Berrebi & Kari E. Watkins, 2020. "Whos Ditching the Bus?," Papers 2001.02200, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2020.
    14. Allen, Jeff & Farber, Steven, 2019. "Sizing up transport poverty: A national scale accounting of low-income households suffering from inaccessibility in Canada, and what to do about it," SocArXiv ua2gj, Center for Open Science.
    15. Barajas, Jesus, 2021. "The Roots of Racialized Travel Behavior," SocArXiv unmkx, Center for Open Science.
    16. Aguilera-García, Álvaro & Gomez, Juan & Velázquez, Guillermo & Vassallo, Jose Manuel, 2022. "Ridesourcing vs. traditional taxi services: Understanding users’ choices and preferences in Spain," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 161-178.
    17. Ben-Elia, Eran & Benenson, Itzhak, 2019. "A spatially-explicit method for analyzing the equity of transit commuters' accessibility," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 31-42.
    18. Zou, Zhenpeng & Cirillo, Cinzia, 2021. "Does ridesourcing impact driving decisions: A survey weighted regression analysis," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 1-12.
    19. Jin, Tanhua & Cheng, Long & Wang, Kailai & Cao, Jun & Huang, Haosheng & Witlox, Frank, 2022. "Examining equity in accessibility to multi-tier healthcare services across different income households using estimated travel time," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 1-13.
    20. Adam Millard-Ball & Liwei Liu & Whitney Hansen & Drew Cooper & Joe Castiglione, 2023. "Where ridehail drivers go between trips," Transportation, Springer, vol. 50(5), pages 1959-1981, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:4:p:2222-:d:501859. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.