SHIFTING THE PUBLIC-TRANSPORTATION PARADIGM FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: WHY? WHAT? HOW?

The effort launched by the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) to examine New Paradigms for Local Public Transportation Organizations has reached a major milestone that promises to trigger debate among those agencies and organizations that share responsibility for planning and delivery of public-transit services. The project, begun in 1998, is based on the premise that fundamental change is needed in today\u27s local public-transportation organizations if the full potential and value of public transportation is to be realized in the years ahead. The New Paradigm effort reached a milestone in 1999 with publication of TCRP Report 53, entitled, Forces and Factors that Require Consideration of New Paradigms. The report provides a compelling synthesis of the trends that may necessitate fundamental change, and poses a series of rhetorical questions urging readers to examine the extent to which each of these trends are in evidence in their respective communities. As the project moves ahead, models of fundamental institutional change will be explored in detail and their potential value assessed. In the months ahead, the project will further document what these new institutional models might look like in a society that is expected to remain fundamentally dependent on personal motor-vehicle use. In addition, the project will outline the activities and processes that can be followed to explore fundamental institutional change--paradigm shifts--at the local and regional level