Citation

Fausch PA. Transp. Res. Rec. 1981; 831: 55-59.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1981, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The rural public transportation demonstration ongoing in Hohenlohekreis in the Federal Republic of Germany is described. Hohenlohekreis is roughly the equivalent of a small county in the United States. It contains an area of 775 sq kilometers (300 sq. miles) and is essentially rural. The demonstration in Hohenlohe appears to be a unique effort in that it integrates public school traffic into public transportation to achieve the goals of reducing the overall cost and making transit more useful and attractive to users. What has been accomplished is the coordination of all rural public transit (regular-route transit, school bus, intercity bus and rail, and elderly and handicapped services) into one geographic area under one coordinated organizational strategy. The demonstration will not end until August 1982, but it shows that integration of rural public transportation and school transportation works in the physical sense; that cooperation of school officials is essential; that planning for this type of service takes a lot of time, is very difficult, and involves considerable planning at the tactical level; that coordination of rural public transportation services can only be realized if there is an institution to provide for the coordination; and that there is significant room for more innovation at the planning level in paratransit services, both in Europe and in the United States.