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Transportation

Coordinated Human Service Transportation:  State Legislative Approaches

By Matt Sundeen, James B. Reed, and Melissa Savage
January 2005

NCSL's report Coordinated Human Service Transportation: State Legislative Approaches provides a comprehensive look at state level coordination of specialized transportation services.  All states provide or support specialized transportation services for people who have difficulty using a car because of poverty, disability, age or other condition.  Since the 1970s, many lawmakers, planners, and providers of these services have voiced the need to coordinate special transit programs to save money and improve service.  This first of its kind report examines state level coordination in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and identifies and defines common approaches.  The report focuses on state coordination legislation and analyzes the effectiveness of various legislative mechanisms.  It contains several recommendations for state legislators.

 Download PDF Version (Full Report--133 pages)

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Executive Summary

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures

Table 1: State Coordination Approaches
Figure 1: Number of People Over Age 65, Over Age 21 and Disabled, and Below Poverty Line
Figure 2: Sates with Comprehensive Coordination
Figure 3: States with Stove-pipe Coordination

Contents

1. Overview of Human Service Transportation

Senior Citizens
People with Disabilities
Poverty
Many Programs Provide Services for Transportation-Disadvantaged Populations

2. Coordination of Human Service Transportation: Barrier and Benefits

Benefits to Coordination
Barriers to Coordination

3. Federal Coordination Guidance

Federal Coordination Legislation
Other Federal Coordination

4. State Coordination Approaches

Coordination Mechanisms
Comprehensive Coordination
Stove-pipe Coordination
Consolidation
Local Coordination
Broad Coordination
Planned Coordination
Aborted Coordination
Transportation Coordination State Legislative Activity 2003-2004

5. Effectiveness and Recommendations

Effectiveness of Legislative Approaches
Recommendations for Action

6. State Profiles of Activities Related to Human Service Transportation Coordination

Appendix. Inventory of Federal Programs that Provide Transportation Services to the Transportation Disadvantaged

Executive Summary

Personal mobility is a crucial tool required for people to enjoy many significant aspects of their lives.  A growing number of transportation-disadvantaged people in the United States—those with an age-related condition, disability, or who are poor—are imperiled by immobility because they cannot access the most common mode of transportation—a  car.  This has created a need for specialized transportation services, in part, as a consequence of the societal shift from caring for those with disabilities and age-related conditions in institutions to individualized care in communities. To address these needs, many federal, state and local agencies provide, administer or support a wide variety of human service transportation programs.  These programs serve rural and urban communities, indigent populations, veterans, people with disabilities, seniors and Medicaid recipients. 

The large number, diversity and dispersion of specialized transportation programs across many agencies potentially can create ineffective and inefficient service and problems such as duplication of service, underutilization of resources, inconsistent service, gaps in service, inconsistent safety standards and customer inconvenience.  To combat these problems, government agencies, human service organizations and transportation planners have advocated improved program coordination.  All 50 states and the District of Columbia show evidence of activity to coordinate human services transportation and some success in doing so through a variety of approaches.  A largely unknown factor, however, is the effectiveness of state legislatively mandated coordination, which is the primary emphasis of this report.

Research for this report indicates that states take a variety of approaches to specialized transportation coordination.  Thirty-four states have statutes with coordination requirements or authorizations for human service coordination.  However, approaches vary in these states.  Twenty-one states have statutes that specifically require coordination of human service transportation programs, and 13 of these states enacted legislation that involved multiple disadvantaged populations or state agencies.  Other states have statutes that coordinate transportation for a single disadvantaged population or delegate coordination authority to local jurisdictions.  Very few states—only two—consolidated specialized transportation services through legislative action.

Statutes in 17 states provide broad authority for an agency to coordinate specialized transportation services but do not specifically mandate such coordination.  In at least 12 states, state agency reports or task forces have provided recommendations for future coordination activity, and at least 45 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands have applied for federal aid to improve coordination.

The comparative benefits and disadvantages of various state legislative approaches are unclear.  Many studies have examined coordination methods that were formed without state legislative input, including coordination within state agencies, coordination in local communities, coordination by contractors and nongovernmental entities, and federal coordination.   Much less has been written about coordination programs formed through state legislation, and the studies of such programs have indicated mixed results.  Although there are examples of successful state legislative ventures, there also are reports from some jurisdictions that suggest coordination through legislation may not be a panacea that provides a solution to many of the specialized transportation concerns.  In addition, no reports compare various state legislative approaches among multiple jurisdictions. 

This report examines state legislation in all 50 state jurisdictions and the District of Columbia.  Based on the findings in this report, the following recommendations are made:

1. Each state will want to determine the extent to which coordination is identified as a cost-savings or service quality need in their jurisdiction.  
2. State lawmakers will want to identify the current approach to human services transportation coordination in their jurisdiction.  Lawmakers will want to examine whether their state has any legislation that specifically governs human service transportation coordination. 
3. States with specific legislative coordination mandates for specialized human services transportation will want to determine whether those provisions are being implemented.  In several examples, there is no evidence that coordination provisions are being followed by agency action.
4. States without legislation that are dependent on an executive order will want to consider whether this approach adequately addresses coordination concerns.  State executive orders generally do not survive the executive and are threatened when the governor leaves office.  A more permanent coordination mechanism may be achieved through legislation.
5. States with coordination through independent administrative action might consider whether this approach sufficiently addresses coordination concerns.  States with only independent agency action may not encompass all agencies that provide specialized transportation services.
6. In states with specific legislative coordination mandates, lawmakers will want to examine whether the legislation coordinates services for all disadvantaged populations for whom services are intended.  States with “stove-pipe” coordination statutes—statutes that focus on a single population—may consider examining coordination for multiple disadvantaged populations.
7. States with broad coordination requirements will want to consider whether a more specific, specialized transportation mandate would be more appropriate.
8. In states with broad coordination statutes, agencies will want to examine their authority to determine the extent of coordination that is possible under existing laws. 
9. States may want to consider measuring the impacts and outcomes of state coordination activities and strategies, given the relative lack of such information currently.

Notes

An excellent study of the economic effects of  a variety of coordination approaches is Jon E. Burkhardt, David Koffman and Gail Murray, TRCP Report 91—Economic Benefits of Coordinating Human Service Transportation and Transit Services  (Washington, D.C.: Transportation Research Board, 2003), http://www.fta.dot.gov/5811_2246_ENG_HTML.htm.

The Federal Transit Administration has developed a tool to help states and communities assess coordination needs.  See Federal Transit Administration,  Framework for Action: Building the Fully Coordinated Human Service Transportation System (Washington, D.C.: Department of Transportation, 2004).

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