Snohomish County CTR Alternate Plan Final Report

The CTR Board created this opportunity to test the feasibility of new and locally determined approaches for accomplishing the mission of the CTR program. This final report gathers information about the experience and results of your alternate plan. The board is interested in what worked and what didn’t, and what was learned. This report and your final presentation will provide the board with valuable information to learn and consider how the state program can evolve to enhance its effectiveness and/or efficiency.

Jurisdiction: Arlington, Bothell, Edmonds, Lynnwood, Marysville, Monroe, Mountlake Terrace, Mukilteo and Unincorporated Snohomish County

Alternate Plan Concept

  1. Given the ideas, strategies, data-collection methods or administrative changes you tested, what went well? Why?

Community Transit implemented an alternate plan in Snohomish County and the City of Bothell that merged the successful strategies from the traditional employer-based CTR program with our corridor-based trip reduction program Curb the Congestion to produce a unified TDM program that focuses resources on areas with the greatest non-drive alone trip (NDAT) increase potential and return on investment.
The alternate plan targeted the majority of our CTR efforts on the 6 jurisdictions located within Snohomish County’s Southwest Urban Growth Area (UGA). The cities of Bothell, Edmonds, Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace, Mukilteoand unincorporated Snohomish County received an expanded menu of programs and services, updated data tracking through the RideshareOnline.com calendar and quarterly reports and a highertarget for increasing non-drive alone trips.
The three jurisdictions located outside the Southwest UGA (Arlington, Monroe, and Marysville) continued to receive a standard level of traditional employer-based services and a lowertarget for increasing non-drive alone trips. However, these jurisdictions had the opportunity to apply for funds through a grant process to develop a more aggressive transportation program at either the worksite or jurisdiction level.
The move to online data collection and the shorter quarterly reporting was very well received by the Employee Transportation Coordinators (ETCs), and many worksite transportation programs flourished with the enhanced engagement from Community Transit. With additional and more frequent data on worksite commute behavior through the quarterly reports and online trip calendaring, Community Transit and ETCs were able to identify opportunities for CTR program improvements based on changes in data. Also, many ETCs used the transition in RideshareOnline.com as a method to reevaluate their commute benefits to employees and to tie subsidies and other incentives to the trips employees were logging on the calendar.
  1. What challenges were there? How did you address these challenges?

Some of the challenges included:
Challenge:RideshareOnline.com (RSO) had to be modified by adding trip times to accommodate our program requirements forthe Curb the Congestion programto capture peak hour trips.
Solution:This update took several months to complete, working with WSDOT and the developer. While this update was being implemented, staff began working on trainings and communications to assist the ETCs with the implementation at their worksite.
Challenge:Basic network and end-user functionality of RSO created a learning curve for ETCs.
Solution:Staff conducted hands-on detailed training in RSO with each ETC, including network hierarchy, reporting and end user functionality. Additional training was required throughout the alternate plan to refresh ETCs on the different elements’ functionality. Community Transit staff also developed handouts for ETCs to distribute to employees with guidance on logging trips, creating a ridematch trip and accessing the mobile app.
Challenge:Worksites were asked initially to get 15% of their employee population logging trips in the online system (based on the average non-drive alone population at worksites within Snohomish County). ETCs were hesitant at first since the number of employees logging trips in RSOprior to the rollout of the alternate plan was less than 200 totalfor all worksites under Community Transit.
Solution:Community Transit staff provided numerous trainings on how to get their employees in the system and logging trips. Employee population uploadsto the system, messaging through the system, hands-on training and incentives ultimately motivated the employees to begin logging their trips online.
Challenge: Many employees had restricted access to RSO because they did not have computers at work, their company policies did not permit usage of RSO during work hours due to privacy concerns and/or union regulations or a large percentage of the employee population was ESL. Additionally, promotion of the RSO smartphone app contributed to overcoming the computer access problem.
Solution:Staff worked with employers to allow access to RSO by reviewing the privacy and security settings of RSO in detail. Paper calendars and registration forms were created for employees that did not have access to computers. Program information, registration forms and calendars were translated into eight different languages for use in the worksites.
Challenge: Determining which period to use as a baseline for our new data collection process to ensure that we were capturing the actual trip behavior of employees prior to the start of the alternate plan.
Solution: Community Transit staff worked with employers to meet a threshold of 15% of employees registered and logging trips in RSO when the program initially kicked off. Also, staff worked with WSDOT’s data team to evaluate a number of scenarios for developing a baseline and comparing data moving forward.
  1. Did your plan evolve over time? How did you decide to make changes? What effect did the changes have?

We maintained the core elements of the alternate plan throughout the program period including targeted outreach & increased resources to the areas with the highest potential for increased NDAT, online data collection and quarterly reporting. In order to accommodate challenges ETCs and employees faced using the RSO system, staff dedicated additional resources including:developing hands-on training, end user handouts and implementation of a monthly incentive program to encourage continual logging.
  1. Under what circumstances do you think the method you employed would be most successful?

Jurisdictions that would like increased worksite engagement would benefit from this plan. The success of this program requires a high level of staff resources at the jurisdiction level to be able to engage regularly with ETCs and provide one-on-one training and support.
Additionally, the online reporting and data collection made implementation of worksite CTR programssimpler to administer for ETCs once they were fully trained on the RSO system, particularly for those worksites with primarily computer-using staff. Worksites that offer a subsidy or incentive that they administered through the RSO system seemed to have higher success in getting employees engaged in online tracking.

Goals, Targets and Measurement

  1. What was your alternate plan’s performance for drive alone rate (DAR) and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reductions? How does this compare to the performance from your 2011-2012 traditional CTR plan?

Our plan did not track DAR or VMT but focused on increasing non-drive alone trips to the worksite. We reviewed the actual trip data recorded in RideshareOnline.com by the worksite participants and determined this was the best data to use for creating trip goals and targets. The actual data gave a true reading of each worksite’s progress toward the set goals and targets. To confirm this, we met with WSDOT staff tomake a comparison between 2012 survey data and data we were collecting through RideshareOnline.com during the alternate plan period. WSDOT staff performed analysis on our 2012 survey data and extrapolated the trips per person per week for survey respondents that made at least one non-drive alone trip during the survey week. This number was determined to be 3.6 trips per respondent per week. We were able to take the NDAT data fromRSO participants for the 4th quarter 2015, multiply it by four to create an annualized number, and then divide by the number of participants logging those trips. Lastly, we divided that result by 52 weeks. The result for our alternate planwas 2.6 trips per participant per week. Current trends for our RSO trip data shows that this number will continue to increase. Based on this comparison we confirmed that the robustness of data being collected in RSO is comparable to CTR survey data, and the goal of using non-drive alone trips is accurate for our alternate plan.
  1. Did you meet your alternate plan’s DAR, VMT or other goals/targets?

Our alternate plan did not include the state’s goals for DAR and VMT, instead we set our own local goals and targets.
Goal: Increase Non-Drive Alone Trips (NDAT)
Targets:
  • 15% increase in NDAT for jurisdictions in the Southwest UGA
  • 5% increase in NDAT for jurisdictions outside the Southwest UGA
The first task for jurisdictions was to register15% of the worksite employees in and begin logging their NDAT. We began this implementation in January 2014. By the beginning of 4th Quarter 2014, approximately 50% of our worksites had the target number of employees logging trips. Another quarter of the worksites were at least 75% to the registration/logging goal. With this information we initially determined that 4th Quarter 2014 would be our baseline for NDAT logged.
Results for 4th Quarter 2014 vs 4th Quarter 2015 showed a 16.64% increase in NDAT for participants at our worksites. These results were well above the 15% trip target set for the alternate plan. However, review of the trips for the entire year showed that many worksites had more trips made during other quarters of the year. To capture this fluctuation among worksites, we determined that following a fiscal year would best serve the program as a baseline. Comparison of data from FYE 2015 and FYE 2016 shows a 34.52% increase in non-drive alone trips for worksites and a 40.92% increase in NDATfor our Curb the Congestion participants.
  1. What data did you collect?
  2. How did you collect that data?
  3. Were there issues or opportunities that arose from this collection methodology? If so, what were they?
  4. What were some of the factors that influenced your selection of this method?

RideshareOnline.com is a robust data collection tool and we have been able to collect valuable information from the participants logging their trips in the online calendar. Data gathered included:
  • Participant information
  • Employer and worksite information
  • Trip data including date, time, distance, mode and purpose
  • Longitude and latitude information
  • Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)
The data available through RideshareOnline.com did not provide us the opportunity to collect DAR or VMT. This made the comparison with State traditional goals and targets very difficult to compute without significant external assumptions and calculations.
Data collected provided current informationon what was happening at our worksites. Using this data and the addition of quarterly reporting allowed us to see trends as they were happening. This allowed us to work with our ETCs to provide a proactive action plan on a quarterly basis to address any issues or trends that negatively affected their CTR program.
  1. Do you have any qualitative performance information to report? If so, please provide it.

The alternative plan has been received very well from ETCs, and from a staffing perspective, it has been a great advantage to project implementation:
Community Transit (Jurisdiction) Benefits:
•Greater engagement with ETCs
•Dynamic data collection through RideshareOnline.com
•Quarterly worksite review allows for recommendations of proactive changes
•Better representation of trip reduction activity & trends
•Increased engagement in Community Transit incentive programs
Employer Benefits:
•Re-energized ETCs evaluate CTR programs & make updates
•Wide range of incentives available to employees
•Opportunity to track subsidy and incentive participation
•Efficiencies in CTR program reporting

Administration

  1. Was there a noticeable difference in administration time and effort? Can you talk about the administrative differences?

There was an increase in the amount of time that was spent with each worksite during the transition. The ETCs needed assistance with the change from the traditional survey to online data collection. However, post-implementation, administration time and effort has stabilizedthrough the implementation of quarterly check-ins, which helps keep ETCs on track and Community Transit staff engaged throughout the implementation of CTR programs. We have found that the additional staff resources dedicated to the program was essential to our efforts to meet our NDAT target and also significantly increased the level of engagement from the ETCs at our worksites.
  1. How did the implementation costs compare to your traditional CTR plan? Please address both monetary and staff time costs.

The most significant implementation costs were staff resources and incentives, although both were minor cost increases. Additional staff (one FTE position) was hired through separate grant funding to accommodate outreach on our residential program, Curb the Congestion, which allowed Community Transit to reallocate staff resources to the CTR program. By moving our Curb the Congestion online calendar to the RSO system, we were able to take advantage of already established incentive programs to encourage employees to log trips. However, after observing decreases in trip logging at some worksites, Community Transit developed a monthly drawing for a $100 incentive that CTR sites could opt-in to each month.
In addition, there were modest increase to training resources and collateral to support the program.
  1. How did your employers, employees and decision-makers react to the different plan?

In a follow up meeting with ETCs during fall 2016, those present stated that they preferred the quarterly reporting and online data collection over the traditional CTR program of surveys and annual reports. Also, many of the ETCs observed that the new program gave them the opportunity to reevaluate their CTR programs and share commute data with management.

Programmatic Learning

  1. Please compare and contrast the pros and cons of this plan with those of your traditional CTR plan.

Under the alternate plan, staff was better able to engage with the ETCs. We were in contact with each one quarterly, at a minimum.ETCs became more engaged and began to review their worksite programs that, in some cases, had been in the same since the early 1990’s.
Having to maintain a control group for traditional CTR programs, as well as concentrate resources on areas with the highest potential for NDAT increase, Community Transit implemented two separate reporting processes, support structures and targets to different jurisdictions. There was concern that this would cause confusion or pushback from participating worksites. However, to date has not occurred from worksites in any of the participating jurisdictions.
  1. Knowing what you do now, what would you keep, change or add to your plan? Why? This could be the program’s design, strategies, goals or data-collection method.

This plan has seen remarkable success during its implementation. After a significant review of goals and methodologies, along with necessary and desirable advancements in the RideshareOnline.com system, we believe the program is primed for a successful future.To reduce confusion and administrative burden on staff, Community Transit will incorporate the three jurisdictions located outside the Southwest UGA that were in the control group during the alternate plan period for the 2017-2019 CTR Plan update.
  1. Have the results or the experience of your alternate plan generated any new TDM ideas? If so, please provide them.

The need for expanded interaction with worksites along with the limitations of staff availability has generated a plan for more digital availability of resources and assistance. ETC trainings, held primarily through a webinar format, are being recorded and plans for test-based self-education on those trainings is being formulated. Additionally, the implementation of virtual transportation events – where information is available digitally, with staff available virtually through chat or phone during a set time – will greatly expand staff presence at worksite transportation events.
  1. Did the greater flexibility provided by the board’s pilot program open doors for your program?

Did you have enough guidance and support from the board and state program to aid in the development and implementation of your alternate plan? Please share your thoughts with us.