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13 <br />Dnrltam cotmty <br />For Durham County residents, perhaps the number one benefit of a regional program <br />would be an increase in opportunities for rural general public transportation. Currently, <br />general public hips are constrained by the resources available and a focus on <br />accommodating customers within existing human service agency trips. This limits both <br />the scheduling flexibility of customers as well as access to the system by those residents <br />whose origins or destinations do not coincide geographically with the travel patterns of <br />agency clients. Regional services and the availability of a greater number of vehicles <br />system-wide would allow greater flexibility in trip scheduling for both agencies and the <br />general public, ideally opening up new areas of the region to direct access to the system.. <br />Similarly, a broader program that could include taxi services or service routes could <br />provide a better array of services. <br />Durham County Access akeady benefits from the overlap in operating contracts with <br />DATA's ADA parahansit program in the City of Durham, whereby vehicles from the two <br />systems may be interchanged as needed by the single operator of the two services. <br />Expanding this efficiency to a regional level would continue to improve the cost- <br />effectiveness and efficiency of operations both locally and regionally. <br />Marketing and branding of the system is another important benefit of regionalization. <br />With limited resources available for general public trips, the incentive to aggressively <br />market to the non-agency client is also constrained,. Thus, knowledge of the system's <br />existence or how public transportation is provided is limited. A uniform branding of <br />services tluoughout the region and expanded marketing efforts would ensure all residents <br />are aware of what services are available and are not confused by a variety of systems <br />providing similar (but not identical) services. <br />Orange County <br />Orange Public Transit currently engages in an aggressive marketing campaign with its <br />available resources. With information about OPT services available on the gotriangle.org <br />Internet site, as well as ongoing outreach from the County and OPT to promote the <br />general public component of the service, brand awareness is good.. <br />The rural general public service offered by OPT is heavily focused on service routes and <br />combining the general public with regularly scheduled agency-oriented trips, This has <br />proven effective and OPT's general public ridership is quite high, Nonetheless, there can <br />be increased mobility options through demand-response service, for example, and <br />opportunities to interact with other public operators such as Chapel Hill Transit and the <br />removal of barriers to operations in municipalities within Orange County would increase <br />customers' flexibility in trip planning and create a more efficient network. <br />Ti Tangle Regional Tratrsportation Development Plan - E.cecutive Sunnnary 11 <br />