Estimating Cost Savings of Coordinating Regional Non-Emergency Human Transport Services

Local public transportation agencies provide a nonemergency human transport service to nearby hospitals and doctors’ offices. Some users require specialized medical services at a hospital located out of the normal service area. In the Piedmont/Triad region of North Carolina, the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation (PART) began PART Connections in April 2004, to provide two daily transportation services between the Piedmont/Triad area and the UNC/Duke medical areas. Using current operating cost data of participating transportation systems, round-trip costs to the UNC/Duke medical areas from each county and to the nearest PART Connections stop are estimated. Given the actual number of passengers served by PART Connections during the first ninemonth period of the service, the net saving in the operating cost by participating PART Connections is estimated for each system. Then, the total service hours saved by using PART Connections are estimated for each system, and are used to estimate the number of additional passengers served within the system. It is estimated that PART Connections could provide a net saving of $38,000 on operation expenses annually to the participating four county transportation systems. More importantly, PART Connections would enable the four county systems to provide more than 10,000 additional passenger trips within each county annually, by using the saved resources. In addition, 12 local community transportation providers in 15 western counties of the Piedmont/Triad region, which currently do not participate in PART Connections, are estimated to save a modest $9,600 in total annually, by using PART Connections.