Literature Review

Lack of Cost Allocation Methodology as a Barrier to Transportation Coordination

The Federal government has a long history of recognizing the need for coordination between governmentally funded public and human service transportation programs. As early as 1977, the General Accounting Office (GAO — later renamed as the Government Accountability Office) reported on the barriers to coordination between transportation agencies.1

The GAO revisited this subject in 1999 in a report that discusses the reasons for the persistent problem of fragmentation and duplication of service in public transit and human services transportation, despite consensus about the benefits of coordination.2 The report provides background on activities at the Federal level during the 1980s and 1990s within the Departments of Transportation and Health and Human Services. These activities included the formation of a Coordinating Council on Human Services Transportation in 1986 and its 1988 effort that identified 64 barriers to transportation coordination and issued a Federal response to each of them. These barriers included the lack of standardized accounting and reporting procedures used by human service providers that receive Federal transportation funding, with the DOT and HHS responding that they would continue to discuss the development of such standards for all transportation components of their programs.

The report documents efforts during the 1997 and 1998 DOT appropriations bills to address the need for state and regional planning to achieve transportation coordination objectives, including cost-sharing arrangements for HHS program clients transported by Americans with Disabilities (ADA) paratransit systems based on a uniform accounting system. Recommendations for Federal action include requiring the Coordinating Council to issue a strategic plan and an action plan, report annually on initiatives and accomplishments, and direct regional working groups to assess barriers to coordination at the local level. In subsequent reports, the GAO continued to highlight the lack of a cost allocation methodology as a major barrier to coordination efforts. In 2003, the agency was asked to study the extent to which government agencies are currently providing transportation services to the transportation-disadvantaged (older adults, people with disabilities, and low-income individuals) and coordination of the