摘要: |
Policymakers from state and federal agencies are focusing on techniques that can lead to the more cost-effective use of transportation resources. A key example is the United We Ride effort to coordinate transportation services which is led by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and supported by multiple other Federal agencies. Just as the 1970s and 1980s saw a proliferation of transportation services for persons with specialized travel needs, the 1990s and later years have seen a proliferation of computerized programs from various private vendors for the administration and operation of those specialized transportation services. A large number of computer software vendors now promote their unique, proprietary transportation software products. The wide variety and dissimilar nature of many of these products often impedes the coordination needed to enhance the cost-effective delivery of specialized transportation services. Many of these software venders specialize in one sector of the industry, such as paratransit, but their software applications have been independently constructed and do not communicate with each other even within just one branch of the industry. The coordination of transportation services is intended to improve the cost-effectiveness of transportation services, but coordination efforts are impeded because the problem of making it possible for software programs to communicate with each other has not yet been fully addressed. Addressing this issue is a major objective of this project. Since forcing all transportation providers to use only one vendors software is not possible, our focus is how to integrate the information and capabilities of multiple software applications for scheduling and dispatching paratransit services so that they can transfer information seamlessly to each other. |