Contracting Commuter Rail Services

Project G-14 was designed to provide guidance to public agencies and other key stakeholders in contracting commuter rail services. Currently, there are no guidelines or generally recognized best practices to consider in determining how to provide a city or a metropolitan region with commuter rail service (by direct operation and/or by contract). The digest resulting from Project G-14 presents potential approaches, an evaluation of the approaches, and guidance on how and when to apply different approaches to existing and new services; documents current commuter rail practices and gaps in knowledge; and provides an overview of the commuter rail systems operating in the United States and Canada. This digest has five chapters. Chapter 1 is the introduction and presents the digest organization. Chapter 2 provides information on the history and current status of commuter rail in North America. Chapters 3 and 4 provide a review of the regulatory environment for commuter rail in the United States and Canada, respectively. Chapter 5 discusses how each commuter rail agency approaches contracting for services.