Doing more with less requires innovative approaches to transit service delivery. TransitWiki.org is an innovative, collaborative approach to identifying cost-effective strategies that have worked elsewhere, complete with the guidance agencies need to implement the strategies locally.
One objective of TransitWiki is to reduce the time it takes agency staff to find high-quality, authoritative information on implementation. This will allow agency staff to spend less time researching and preparing staff reports and more time implementing high-quality strategies, informed by experiences from other agencies.
“Caltrans worked with UCLA to complete work in support of the development of a statewide strategic public transit plan, which has
“Transportation researchers have many outlets to publish their work, but often not in a form or in venues accessible to practitioners. TransitWiki allows practitioners to start with an issue or concept, like bus rapid transit, and find lots of information about BRT and related topics with curated links to guidance for each topic,” said Professor Brian Taylor, Director of the UCLA Institute for Transportation Studies. “While some of the largest large transit agencies have libraries that curate practice-relevant information and publications, most small agencies don’t have such resources. TransitWiki can help connect these staff with the most up-to-date authoritative information on topics relevant to their work,” Professor Taylor added.
The UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies developed the site with funding from the California Department of Transportation’s Division of Mass Transportation. Caltrans charged UCLA researchers with developing a report that identified cost-effective options to improve transit service as part of its Statewide Transit Strategic Plan effort.
During their research, the UCLA team determined that a web format would offer the flexibility needed to ensure relevance to California’s diverse range of agencies. They also noted the need for a forum to accelerate the dissemination of best practices and lessons learned through statewide experimentation and implementation. UCLA and Caltrans ultimately decided to produce the report content into a wiki-based site that allows agency staff and other transit stakeholders to contribute information about their local experiences.
Though funded by Caltrans, the site is available to all transit stakeholders. Articles on TransitWiki site discoverable through web search engines and the site uses the same software as Wikipedia, so visitors can easily become contributors.
TransitWiki is available at http://www.transitwiki.org
