Over the past decade, highway and urban congestion have garnered the attention of commuters as well as government entities. Facility joint-use, by expanding public transit using existing rail corridors, is one approach to solving the constellation of problems occurring as offshoots of congestion. The potential and feasibility of shared use of rail corridors, between light rail vehicles (associated with public transit) and freight railroads, to function compatibly are still being investigated, even as current "near shared-track" operations are evolving.

This Guidebook will aid states in developing public-private partnerships with private freight railroads to permit operation of passenger services over shared-use rail corridors. The Guidebook should encourage the broad acceptance of improved principles, processes, and methods to support agreements on access, allocation of operation and maintenance costs, capacity allocation, operational issues, future responsibilities for infrastructure improvements, and other fundamental issues that will affect the ultimate success of shared-use passenger and freight agreements between public and private railroad stakeholders.

During the last 30 years, due to the flexibility of light rail transit (LRT), new systems have been implemented, some of which include line segments that share tracks with freight operations regulated by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). To operate on the general railroad system, these LRT systems have obtained waivers from FRA safety regulations by operating with temporal separation. The aim of this research study was to further develop concepts for temporal separation to enable shared use operations in additional locations with more frequent and more flexible operations of FRA-compliant and non-compliant services. Based on the operating concepts and technology that facilitate temporal separation on the NJ TRANSIT River LINE, this project prepared a design for expanding freight and passenger operations while maintaining separation of modes in a configuration that is very similar to designs that have already been accepted by FRA.

This report provides information on successful business-to-business marketing techniques with application to transit. The Guidebook provides motivation for doing business-to-business marketing, lessons from the private sector as well as the transit industry, guidance on how to implement a business-to-business marketing program, tools and techniques for business-to-business marketing, and evaluation measures. The report should be useful to transit planners, managers, marketing professionals, and others interested in the use of marketing strategies to build ridership.