Access to transportation is a vital lifeline for many low-income individuals. It allows them to get to work, school, and medical appointments among other things. Recently, many public transit agencies across the United States and Canada have started offering discount programs for low-income riders to help increase their ability to travel.
“Low-income discount programs are a relatively new innovation in the United States, and most transit agencies have to start from scratch or rely on advice from other agencies with an existing program,” said Matthew Davis, a graduate research assistant at the University of Tennessee Center for Transportation Research. “Until now, there hasn’t been one place to find information on how to build or structure these programs.”
Davis and his PhD advisor, Candace Brakewood, an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, have provided a resource for transit agencies through their new comprehensive research on low-income reduced fare programs.
The research was sponsored by the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP), which is part of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Titled, Providing Low-Income Fare Discounts at Public Transit Agencies, the report was published last month as TCRP Synthesis 182.
Brakewood and Davis provided a detailed synthesis of the current practices that have been implemented by transit agencies across North America to help inform transit agencies interested in implementing a new low-income fare discount program or enhancing an existing program. They sent a 60-question online survey to multiple transit agencies, receiving 26 responses, and conducted interviews with transit agency staff.
Keeping the Process Simple
The number of transit agencies in the US and Canada offering low-income fare discount programs has rapidly grown over the last decade, accelerated even more by the Covid pandemic. Of the agencies Brakewood and Davis surveyed, 72% have launched their programs in the last 10 years.
“One of the biggest takeaways was that there is significant variation in the administration and operation of low-income fare discount programs across North America,” Brakewood said. “All of the transit agencies that participated in this study had different programs and procedures, unless the transit agencies were located in the same geographic area and participated in a regional program.”
The study found that the most common discount agencies used was 50% off the full fare price, and the most common eligibility criteria for riders were either a percentage of federal poverty level or enrollment in another qualifying benefit program, such as SNAP.
“One of the most important lessons we found was to keep the application and income verification processes for the program simple,” Davis said. “A lot of community organizations already do their own income verification, so transit agencies can save money and time by partnering with these organizations or by simply requiring participants to be enrolled in programs like SNAP or EBT.”
Expanding Future Access
Some of the biggest challenges faced by survey respondents included low enrollment, marketing, and customer education. Brakewood and Davis believe future research is needed to explore potential uses of EBT cards, evaluate customer education and enrollment, analyze changes in travel behavior in the short term and long term, and develop performance metrics and measures of success.
Given the benefits of low-income riders having access to transportation, the research performed by Brakewood and Davis provides an important resource for planners and policymakers at public transit authorities that are considering implementing a discount program.
“We have seen a lot of excitement from transit agencies and professionals who want to learn from each other’s work,” Davis said. “By highlighting successful approaches as well as new innovations, like ticket machines that apply the discount when inserting your EBT card, our research makes these practices more widely available and supports agencies at every stage of the process.”
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey (rpotkey@utk.edu)