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Title: Knoxville Tennessee Transportation Brokerage Demonstration: an evaluation

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:5420726

The Brokerage Demonstration was conducted from October 1975 through December 1978. In this first metropolitan, multi-modal implementation of the brokerage concept, an organization known as the Knoxville Commuter Pool (KCP) attempted to identify and match transportation demand and supply across a variety of users and providers, and to effect legal and regulatory reforms conductive to the improvement of transportation services. Primary emphasis during the course of the demonstration was on serving two market segments: commuters and social-service agencies. A major aspect of KCP's commuter-oriented activities was the large-scale surveying of employees at their worksites and their subsequent computer matching with buses and/or with other commuters having similar travel patterns. KCP also purchased 51 vans and leased them to individual commuters as part of an operational vanpool program designed to demonstrate the viability of this mode and thereby to encourage the growth of a large private vanpool fleet. Implementation of the vanpool program required significant changes in state regulatory law and in the availability and cost of insurance for vanpools; however, KCP's active role as an advocate for all forms of ridesharing resulted in a variety of important changes in Tennessee's laws affecting other public transportation modes as well. KCP's activities regarding social-service agencies began with a survey to identify agencies which offered or were interested in offering transportation services to clients; interested agencies were then dealt with individually, eventually resulting in the establishment of three new services.While this experiment in brokerage had great success in its efforts for institutional change, its overall impact in the Knoxville area was quite limited. Nevertheless, the brokerage concept appears to offer the flexibility to search for better solutions to transportation problems.

Research Organization:
Multisystems, Inc., Cambridge, MA (USA)
OSTI ID:
5420726
Report Number(s):
UMTA-TN-06-0006-80-1
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English