Mobility management is an innovative approach for managing and delivering coordinated transportation services to customers, including older adults, people with disabilities, and individuals with lower incomes. Mobility management focuses on meeting individual customer needs through a wide range of transportation options and service providers. It also focuses on coordinating these services and providers in an effort to achieve a more efficient transportation service delivery system.
Mobility management involves these key steps:
- Developing an inventory of available services
- Identifying customer needs
- Developing strategies to meet customer needs
- Coordinating financial and other resources
- Improving coordination through transportation brokerage systems
- Training staff and volunteers
- Promoting the use of innovative technologies, services, and other methods to improve customer service and coordination
- Developing customer information and trip planning systems
Mobility managers
Mobility managers serve as policy coordinators, operations service brokers, and customer travel navigators. They help communities develop transportation coordination plans, programs, and policies, and build local partnerships. Mobility managers may also work to promote land use policies that favor transit-oriented development, public transportation, and pedestrian access. They coordinate transportation services among all customer groups, service providers, and funding agencies and work with human service agencies and workforce centers that coordinate the travel and trip planning needs of individuals who receive human service program assistance.
Two programs administered by WisDOT (5310 and
WETAP) have awarded projects that include mobility managers throughout the state.
Mobility management in Wisconsin
In Wisconsin, mobility management began when former Governor Jim Doyle charged heads of state agencies to work toward eliminating administrative barriers that prohibit transportation coordination by forming the Interagency Council on Transportation Coordination (ICTC) in October 2005. Part of its mission was to develop a state model of coordination.
Through the 2006 Coordinated Public Transit – Human Services Transportation planning process, mobility management was identified as one of eleven priorities in most areas of the state.
Mobility management projects were identified and defined through the locally developed human services transportation coordination planning process in 2006 and the subsequent planning process in 2008. The direction mobility management projects take is a local decision and is not limited or mandated by WisDOT other than to ensure project eligibility according to the applicable funding source.
Wisconsin’s mobility managers are employed by a variety of agencies including aging and disability resource centers, local governing bodies, employment and community action programs, transit systems, human service and social service agencies, independent living centers, and economic opportunity councils.
Contacts:
Lori Jacobson
lori.jacobson@dot.wi.gov
(608) 266-1128
Eric Anderson
eric1.anderson@dot.wi.gov
(608) 267-1845