Transit Agency Goals and Non-Traditional Performance Indicators Focused on Equity (2024)
Chapter: Summary
SUMMARY
Transit Agency Goals and Non-Traditional Performance Indicators Focused on Equity
The purpose of this section is to provide a quick, accessible, and stand-alone summary of this synthesis project, including a discussion of purpose, scope, and methodology, before presenting the main findings from the study.
Purpose, Scope, and Methods
Historically, ridership has been the primary way transit agencies have communicated their success and public value in making connections for the community. Burgeoning awareness and acknowledgment of the inequities tied to race, ethnicity, national origin, physical ability, income, age, and gender in communities is prompting transit agencies to carefully consider how service decisions affect diverse communities. Several transit agencies have shifted services and enhanced performance tracking in recent years, continuing to explore non-traditional performance indicators and the means to emphasize their importance by linking the results to funding.
The objective of this synthesis is to document the current practice of transit systems using non-traditional indicators to measure and improve equity as it relates to service planning and the customer experience. The study focused on understanding how transit agencies establish equity goals and the key equity performance indicators and targets they use to track their progress toward reaching their goals.
Synthesis activities consisted of a detailed literature review, including documentation of existing equity goals and measures (see Chapter 2 and Appendix A); a multiphase data collection process (see Chapter 3 and Appendix B); and the creation of five case examples that highlight unique agency practices.
To guide the data collection effort and provide respondents with a shared understanding of what equity meant within the context of this project, the following definition of equity in transit was used:
Equity in transit is the fair and just distribution of the benefits and burdens associated with transit services and infrastructure across communities to address the needs of the people in a manner that acknowledges and accounts for historical and current disparities, considers and supports people’s unique circumstances and abilities, and continues to evolve as these factors change. At minimum, transit benefits are presumed to include sufficient access to destinations and opportunities.
Key Findings
Literature Review and Data Collection
Recent work on equity in transit presents numerous lessons, summarized in five high-level takeaways:
- Significant diversity exists among the transit agencies with equity-related goals and/or performance measures. These agencies include all sizes of transit providers and represent communities that range across the political spectrum.
- Regardless of agency size or location, both a commitment to equity among agency leadership and procedural and structural changes within the transit agency appear to be required for the creation and ongoing sustainability of equity initiatives.
- Resource limitations can reduce the breadth of a transit agency’s equity work and diminish the potential outcomes. However, transit agencies committed to positive change can achieve results that belie the size and capacities of the agency.
- Many ways exist to gauge the performance of a transit agency’s efforts to improve transit equity, and it seems that the industry has just begun to understand what is possible when qualitative data are integrated into the measurement/analysis process.
- Transit agencies that publicly document their equity initiatives provide varying levels of detail about the history, methodologies, changes required, and results experienced by transit riders.
Case Examples
Five transit agencies were selected as case examples because of their unique approaches to transit equity. Highlights from each of the case examples are presented in Table 1.
Broad Takeaways
Takeaways from this trend along three themes—capacity, process, and culture—are summarized here:
Capacity
- Codifying the responsibilities and value of the teams and/or staff who work on equity within a transit agency—in policy or similar documentation—gives weight to their work and helps avoid cuts to the programs and projects they lead.
- Recent and relevant data are a pivotal component of equity measurement, which requires investment in data collection and processing.
- Transitioning from equity measurement findings to the implementation of programs or policies that respond to those findings is difficult and not yet reliably achieved in the industry.
- Transit agency staff who work on equity experience high demand for their expertise while being under-resourced.
Process
- Development patterns that favor expansion over densification directly affect transit service equity.
- Federal requirements and guidance cannot be the only way to measure progress toward equity because of the nuance and context required to address many problems. However,
Table 1. Case example highlights.
| Durham Region Transit (DRT) Ontario, CAN |
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| Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Boston, MA |
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| Metro Transit Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN |
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| Cecil Transit Cecil County, MD |
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| Envida Colorado Springs, CO |
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- It is important to level-set commitments and expectations when working to address inequities so that the people being served can confidently rely on the services long-term.
- Public feedback and stakeholder inquiries activate different, and often more powerful, responses within transit agencies because of the need to maintain a positive public image. This fact can be useful for equity work because it helps motivate decision-makers to approve and invest in such efforts.
- Qualitative data are important for establishing good performance measurement and providing context to quantitative information. Furthermore, research and practice trends show increased willingness and capacity to include this type of information.
- Transparency throughout the process of establishing equity goals and measures as well as transparent reporting of progress is important for earning and maintaining trust among riders and the community.
- Variations in how practitioners define and approach the concept of equity can limit progress at the local and industry levels.
- Transit agencies can become experts in their riders’ needs with the right feedback loop via meaningful engagement.
these requirements are often useful in encouraging transit agencies to achieve a minimum level of equity or initiate conversations with their constituents.
Culture
- Cultural change is necessary for equity measures to take hold and have a lasting impact; however, long-standing methods and perspectives are difficult to change without sustained attention and a consistent vision.
- Discussing and addressing equity in transit are both difficult and intimidating tasks.
- Equity work can be challenging and may result in turnover or disinterest that inhibits progress. It is important to anticipate this fact and strategically work against it so that momentum toward change can be maintained.
Next Steps for Research and Implementation Opportunities
Based on this project’s findings, three opportunities for research and implementation related to transit equity goals and performance measurement are presented in a proposed order of execution:
- Develop and implement methods for researching transit industry trends and practices that make it easy, convenient, and rewarding for practitioners to participate in.
- Research the level of guidance and standardization appropriate to help transit agencies achieve greater transit equity without limiting the collection and use of context-specific data that describe people’s transit experience.
- Develop guidance to support and facilitate transit agency efforts to create equity-first goals, objectives, and performance measures.
