CarFreeAtoZ

Platform: CarFreeAtoZ
Coverage area: Washington DC metropolitan area
Stakeholders:

  • Arlington County Commuter Services (ACCS): the transport demand management agency of the Arlington County, a bureau of Arlington County’s Transportation Division
  • Transport operators from multiple jurisdictions (Washington DC, Virginia, Maryland): ART, DASH, DC Circulator, Fairfax Connector, MTA, PRTC, Ride-On, VRE, and WMATA.
  • Developer: Conveyal

Organisation and management: Platform was commissioned to private developer by the ACCS as part of the Mobility Lab of Arlington County. ACCS’ mission involves reducing traffic congestion, decreasing parking demand, promoting maximum use of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) infrastructure, and improving air quality and mobility in and around Arlington.

Source of funding: Mobility Lab’s Transit Tech Initiative is funded through a Demonstration grant by the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation. The programme is part of the Mobility Lab which encompasses a series of Transport Demand Management initiatives and is funded by Arlington County (Virginia) Commuter Services, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Virginia Department of Transportation, and the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

Initial Investment: CarFreeAtoZ was created out of a partnership with Virginia’s Department of Rail and Public Transportation. The county allocated $100,000 for development of the website in fiscal year 2013, while the state paid $400,000 via a “demonstration grant”. In 2015 Arlington county has moved to “phase two” for CarFreeAtoZ that was expected to cost USD1 million, also coming through a grant from the Department of Rail and Transportation.

Development history: CarFreeAtoZ’s history coincides with the emergence and growth of their developer Conveyal in 2011. In that year, ACCS’s research arm Mobility Lab announced a fellowship program for aspiring transit techies. Conveyal’s fellowship produced promising results, leading to a grant for the project, awarded from the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation. ACCS matched the DRPT funds.

Modes of transport included: metro, bus, private car, carpooling (formal and ‘slugging’), private bike, shared bike.

Service Features: (i) multi-modal journey planner, including option to register for carpooling schemes, private bike and shared biked (ii) trip duration estimate, (iii) carbon footprint of the trip options, (iv) comparison of trip costs; (v) information on calories burned. Therefore it is a platform that serves both individual and collective optimization purposes.

The platform does not provide real-time information – it is essentially aimed at serving as a general planner for defining a daily commuting plan. ACCS has other services that offer this functionality though (Car-free Near Me).

Source of data:

Data flow: Operators providing GTFS data are in different jurisdictions. There is no formal agreements or legal obligation regulating the transfer of data from these operators to ACCS and/or the developer. Conveyal receives and treats the information for later publication. Two main issues faced to obtain data: (i) technical difficulties due to non-standardized data format; (ii) lack of institutional capacity and workforce in these operators to collect, treat and transfer data – especially in the smaller ones.

Open data policy: Information is only shared with entities who are contractually acting upon behalf of CarFreeAtoZ.

Continuity: The current work is partly being done on the basis of the initial grant, and on state funds for marketing.

Miscellaneous: CarFreeAtoZ is part of a broader Transport Demand Management programme led by ACCS Initiative: it is connected to multiple other service and/or platforms related to Travel Demand Management: CommuterPage.com; CommuterDirect.com; Arlington Transit — ART; WalkArlington; BikeArlington; Arlington Transportation Partners; The Commuter Store; Arlington’s Car-Free Diet; Mobility Lab; Car-Free Near Me; Capital Bikeshare; Arlington DOT.