Case Studies of UMTA Private Sector Initiative Projects in Syracuse, Central New Jersey, and Atlanta

This report documents the results of three grants awarded in 1983 by the Urban Mass Transportation Administration for Section 8 Private Sector Initiative projects. The grants were intended to encourage cooperative public and private planning for the solution of specified local transportation problems. The resulting projects involved transit services, ridesharing and flex-time promotion, traffic management, changes in parking policies or facilities, and potentially zoning, development, pedestrian, and bicycle policies or plans. The grant recipients were: The Metropolitan Development Foundation (MDF) in Syracuse, New York; The Middlesex Somerset Mercer Regional Study Council (MSM), centered in Princeton, New Jersey and serving the three surrounding Counties for which it is named; and Central Atlanta Progress (CAP), in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. The first two of these organizations have evolved separate transportation management organizations (TMOs) for administering their grant and for receiving supporting donations from member firms. For them, the challenge grants were "seed money" that helped to finance both the transportation studies of interest and the organizing efforts for the TMOs. In contrast, CAP used its existing organization and private funding channels to act as a temporary TMO in managing a feasibility study of a downtown bus loop that will likely be operated by the local transit agency, MARTA, without significant further involvement by CAP.