Meet Agency Goals and Objectives

  • Transit service planners must perform a thorough assessment of the service provided to identify areas of improvement
  • What kind of data is needed, how to collect/obtain data, and how to use the data to comply with service standards, develop solutions, and present ideas for service improvements
  • The planning process is linked to key organizational processes such as budgeting, capital programming, and performance management
  • The service planner needs a good understanding of the agency’s short- and long-term goals and objectives

Service Requests

  • It’s important to review and analyze service requests from various services:
    • Riding and non-riding public
    • Operations
    • Service stakeholders
  • The following characteristics need to be considered:
    • Concentrated trip ends: Activities related to transit should be located close to transit stations or stops
    • Quality access system: Provide safe, direct, and easy access to transit for pedestrians, bicyclists, and automobile users while minimizing distances from transit vehicles to buildings or from transit stops to destinations
    • Transit-oriented street patterns: Allow through routing, direct service, and few turns. Controlling automobile traffic can be done if necessary
    • Market orientation: Services are designed to maximize customer satisfaction and needs. Operate directly between origins and destinations without transfers for major ridership patterns, convenient schedules, competitive prices, clean, comfortable vehicles, and good user information and customer service
  • User-oriented transit means:
    • Direct service from the user’s trip origin to destination
    • No transfers, or no more than one transfer, if possible
    • Scheduels that match customer needs
    • Reasonable costs
    • Good access on both ends of the trip

Development and Updating Service Standards

  • A transit service planner must be able to rationally evaluate service changes and make adjustments to services within the budget constraints and available resources

  • 5 key measures with the greatest influence on service design:
    • Coverage
    • Span of service
    • Frequency of service
    • Passenger flow
    • Minimum productivity
  • Transit service standards are policies used to make decisions about where transit vehicles should run and how often
  • Two major advantages:
    • Identifies the best use of limited resources by comparing different alternatives for these resources
    • Leads to a fair, equitable, open, and objective comparison of all requests and proposals from the general public, elected officials, and staff
  • In order to provide a high level of transit service that is affordable to passengers and taxpayers, tradeoffs are required between the costs and benefits achieved by providing the service

Collect and Analyze Data

  • A transit planner needs to consider a large number of variables to make good decisions about the type of service the transit agency will operate in the future
  • Many planners now have demographic data, geographic data, running time and schedule adherence data, passenger count data, and additional information from advanced fare collection systems
  • Because of the volume of data, it’s important to spent time on data that’s most useful and relevant
  • Another source of information when creating or modifying routes and schedules is the input from other people
    • Members of the community
    • Transit riders
    • Peers from other agencies
  • Community outreach gives the public the opportunity to voice their opinions on the current service provided and on expected service improvements in the future
    • Route and schedule modifications
    • Fare changes
    • Funding needs
    • Introduction of new transit modes
    • Willingness to pay more taxes to support a transit initiative or fund the transit agency

Measure Performance vs Standards

  • 3 main reasons for performance measures:
    • Required
    • Useful
    • Outsiders need to know what’s going on
  • Key management use of a performance measurement system includes:
    • System monitoring
    • Evaluation of system performance
    • Service and policy changes

Gain Approval of Management and Stakeholders

  • Stakeholders include:
    • Property owners
    • Business owners
    • State and local officials
    • Community groups
    • Transit riders and non-riders
  • Public involvement in the decision-making process requires agency leadership, creative thinking and persistence
  • Addressing public concerns throughout the process legitimizes the final solution and conculdes wiht considerably more popular and sustainable results