by Graham celebrates a superb and ever-growing resource for public transport planning
Today in the US transport planning community is TCRP Day. TCRP is the Transit Cooperative Research Program, an applied research programme that develops near-term, practical solutions to problems facing transit – what we in the UK call public transport, of course. I’m delighted to join in with TCRP day by highlighting this excellent programme, what it does and the ever-growing resources it offers.
TCRP research spans a comprehensive array of topics in public transport: from planning to operations, service design to engineering, and maintenance to legal matters. To give you a flavour of this, some of the most recent reports cover:
- Effective and inclusive virtual engagement for public transport
- Air quality inside buses
- Pedestrian and cyclist safety in BRT and bus priority corridors (the no. 1 most downloaded)
- Inclusive public participation in transit decision-making
- How to evaluate possible fare-free transit
- Procedures for designing and operating ferry services
- Measuring and managing fare evasion
- Deterring trespass on rail transit corridors
It’s really practical, useful work. Some TCRP reports are guidebooks or manuals. Others gather together best-practice and the state of the art from across the US and sometimes beyond. There are also digests on relevant legal topics – a recent one was on the legal impacts of emerging technologies.
I worked in the US for several years, and found the TCRP reports to be an absolutely invaluable source of information, best practice, statistics and ideas. Best of all, they are available online, free-of-charge to users. There are often free webinars to brief practitioners on the findings.
Understandably most of the reports concentrate on North American experience, so back in UK work I’ve turned to them less often. But if you’re ever looking to understand US best practice, or just interested in “how they do things”, then TCRP reports are a great starting-point.
I still have the TCRP scheduling manual and light rail track design manual (no. 3 most popular, apparently) on my bookshelf. The rules of physics and the principles of timetabling apply worldwide, of course!
You can browse the reports, by category, here, or sign up for notifications of new reports here. Do take a look. Generally ‘synthesis reports’ are the ones that report on current practice, and ‘research reports’ are the guidebooks, manuals and frameworks for tackling problems.
TCRP 95: A handbook on travel demand
I’ll give a special mention to the Traveler Response to Transportation System Changes Handbook. The name’s a mouthful, so I usually just say TCRP 95 (its report number) for short. This handbook provides empirical data on the demand impacts of different urban transport policies, operating approaches, systems, and built environment options. If you’ve come across The demand for public transport: a practical guide (TRL 593), you’ll know the sort of thing. TCRP 95 is the nearest American equivalent, but covering a lot more than just public transport.
Each standalone chapter covers its own topic area – examples are park-and-ride, scheduling, fares, parking pricing, active travel facilities and road value pricing. It’s intended as a general guide and to support early-stage work and quick turn-around assessments – it will never be a substitute for local data or modelling. I frequently found it valuable for range-finding, sketch-planning exercises, and (crucially) as an evidence base for why we should be looking at certain factors, approaches or options.
Of all the TCRP publications, this is perhaps the one that brings in the most experience from beyond North America, and in my UK work I’ve sometimes been able to make use of it. Looking back just now at the chapter on road value pricing, to take a topical example, it has summaries of experience in Singapore, Norway, the UK and Germany.
How the programme works
TCRP is sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration, and governed by an oversight and project selection committee who gather ideas on research needs, select topics and recommend funding allocations. The Transportation Research Board provides day-to-day management and publishes the eventual reports.
TCRP day is being promoted by the American Public Transport Association and partners in the US transport planning field, to raise awareness of the programme and showcase its research in action. I’m delighted to add my piece here to celebrate this superb, ongoing resource.
So: happy TCRP Day!
