Low-Income Student Bus Pass Pilot Project Evaluation: Final Report

In August 2002, AC Transit began offering free bus passes to low-income middle and high school students. At the same time, the agency reduced the cost of its monthly youth pass from $27 to $15. This dramatic reduction in costs for student riders resulted from a grassroots advocacy campaign that successfully focused local political attention on school transportation in an area where school busing had largely been eliminated for middle school and high school students. The creation of the program drew together state and local elected officials, youth advocates, schools, and transportation agencies. Across these diverse groups, there was a wide range of goals. Some of the primary goals for the program were improving social equity by lessening the financial burden on low-income families and increasing opportunities for low-income students, improving school attendance rates, increasing participation in after-school and weekend enrichment programs, and improving bus operations by converting students to passes. The two-year demonstration project began in fall 2002 with funding from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) Low Income Flexible Transportation (LIFT) program as well as from the transit operator and several nonprofit organizations. Financial shortfalls in the AC Transit budget led to a mid-course restructuring of the program. At the end of the first year, the AC Transit Board eliminated the free bus pass for low-income students; the remaining LIFT funds will be used to support a $15 monthly pass for all youth. MTC contracted with the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at UC Berkeley to evaluate the impacts of the program on youth, families, schools, and transit providers. Research focused on five areas: attendance, after-school participation, youth travel patterns, program implementation, and impacts on AC Transit. The remainder of this section summarizes the research findings in each of those areas. The remainder of the report contains detailed results for each topic. The study design used multiple methods to assess the impacts of the program including: attendance and grade data from school districts, surveys of over 1,000 students; interviews with school administrators, bus pass program coordinators, truancy officers, and after-school program coordinators; focus groups with students and parents; and financial and operational information from AC Transit. Resources did not permit us to survey all participating schools and students, a set of evaluation schools representative of the geographic, ethnic, and economic diversity of the AC Transit service district were chosen.