Going for Growth

Enhancing the Economic Impact of Public Transit in Gateway Cities with Comprehensive Service Planning

Published Date : July 29, 2014

This new policy brief examines how best practices in transit planning can benefit Massachusetts’s Regional Transit Authorities.

Massachusetts’s Regional Transit Authorities (RTAs) have an opportunity to improve their existing service and make the case for more funding from the state by making the most of a new planning requirement from the legislature.

That’s the key takeaway from a new policy brief released by MassINC’s Gateway Cities Innovation Institute in collaboration with the Smart State Transportation Institute (SSTI) (@SmartTransp). The paper, the sixth in MassINC’s Going for Growth series, compares Massachusetts to best practices in regional transit planning from across the country.

As part of last year’s landmark transportation finance legislation, the state legislature mandated that the RTAs conduct comprehensive service plans. If done well, the paper argues, these assessments could help make the case for more funding from the state going forward

Meet The Authors

Ben Forman

Research Director, MassINC

Rich Parr

Senior Research Director, The MassINC Polling Group

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