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Our takeaways from ACT's Spring Into TDM summits held in the Bay Area, Minneapolis, and Cambridge.
It feels like spring has just sprung, and it's been a busy one already! In April, our team joined up with the best minds in transportation demand management at a trio of regional events hosted by Association for Commuter Transportation (ACT).
The Spring Into TDM summits offered an energizing look at how cities, agencies, and advocates are reimagining how people travel in urban areas. We left each event buzzing with new connections, ideas, and insights, and have been excited to share them ever since.
Here’s a roundup of the big takeaways that stuck with us—and a few personal highlights from the team.
Held in Minneapolis, the inaugural Midwest TDM Summit brought together transportation professionals from across the region to explore how TDM strategies are reshaping mobility in both urban and rural contexts. Panels spotlighted the latest action plans from MetCouncil and the Mayo Destination Medical Center, plus tech-forward initiatives from the University of Minnesota and HOURCAR.
Will, on transportation happiness:
Those of us in this industry spend a lot of time measuring the success of commuter strategies with quantitative data: riders served, SOVs eliminated, VMTs reduced, revenue generated, etc. But over lunch, Dr. Yingling Fan encouraged us to focus instead on rider happiness. As a researcher and educator, Dr. Fan combines behavioral research and self-reported commuter data (using tools like Daynamica) to reimagine what success in TDM can look like (a fascinating case in point: the Twin Cities Transportation Happiness Map). The good? Biking is the #1 happiest commute. And the reality? Public transit has room for improvement.
ACT returned to the Bay Area with a one-day gathering of TDM-minded folks representing transit agencies, universities, employers, and benefits platforms across Northern California. We learned about innovative ways agencies are adjusting to changes in ridership—SMART’s monthly pass priced for the 3 day work week, for example—and heard expert insights on Fifty Years of Bicycle Policy in Davis, OakDOT’s Universal Basic Mobility pilots in East and West Oakland, and how San Francisco State used student feedback to shape its Gator Pass benefit for commuting students.
Nikki, on getting a crash course in regional transportation:
I was lucky to attend the NorCal TDM Summit during my second week at Jawnt, and it really was the best possible way to see the real-world impact of TDM. For example, I knew the Bay Area has a rather wild number of agencies servicing a single region, but didn’t fully grasp how challenging that is from a scheduling and communications standpoint. The Big Sync is the latest effort to align agencies' schedules and reduce travel time for riders, and has already made key connections (like the famed Caltrain-BART connection in Millbrae) a much smoother experience for riders.
The Patriot Chapter’s first regional TDM summit was a two-day workshop full of tours and panels hosted in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Harvard University. About 80 TDM professionals attended, bringing questions and experiences that ranged from bike lanes in downtown Boston to regional vanpool beyond the far Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
Ruth, on her favorite tour:
Having the MBTA come in and talk about passenger information was a real departure (pun absolutely intended) from the typical TDM session. A lot of TMAs run their own shuttle systems, and some of them get to be quite substantial, so it was cool to hear the fifth largest US transit agency come in and have all these independent operators say yeah, that’s exactly what I’m dealing with, too. The Q&A session was very robust. The MBTA has invested heavily in making their own open source alternatives to escape vendor lock-in and drive interoperability, so watching that exchange made me proud to be a T rider.
While each event was chock full of regional context, several common threads emerged—an indicator of the overarching trends faced by transportation in the US today. While growing ridership and improved safety is an obvious reason to celebrate, the words “fiscal cliff” and “funding challenges” came up more than anyone would like.
Still, innovation is pushing forward: open-loop payments are rolling out in more cities, making it easier than ever for riders to tap-and-go, and with more access to commuter data than ever before, organizations are building solutions that meet the need of a diverse and changing workforce.
Though that wraps up our TDM spring tour, we’re already looking ahead to the ACT Annual International Conference this August in New Orleans, where the conversations will continue with national leaders, new research, and bold ideas shaping the future of transportation. Hope to see you there!
