Transit Agency Goals and Non-Traditional Performance Indicators Focused on Equity (2024)
Chapter: 1 Introduction
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Background
A primary goal of public transit is to connect people to jobs, goods, services, and other essentials on a daily basis. Historically, ridership has been the focus of how transit agencies have communicated their success and public value. 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.
Transit agencies across the United States have started to measure progress and performance in new ways that capture levels of investment in service and the rider experience. They have also started to investigate whether differences exist in experience across demographic groups. In recent years, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and an acknowledgment of disparities in access to essential services and connections to opportunity added pressure to adopt new goals and performance measures, in particular, to track the efficiency of systems facing lower ridership and the need to serve essential employees and trip purposes.
Several transit agencies have shifted services and enhanced performance tracking in recent years, continuing to explore non-traditional performance measures and the means to emphasize their importance by linking the results to funding. With several years of non-traditional performance indicator tracking underway, an early understanding of COVID-19 impacts, and the continued emergence of new service models, the industry is at a key point in understanding and documenting current practices, hence this synthesis project.
To guide this project’s data collection effort and provide respondents with a shared understanding of what equity means within the context of the 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.
Objective and Scope
The objective of this synthesis is to document the current practice of transit systems using non-traditional indicators to improve service planning and customer experience equity. 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.
Report Organization
The report is organized in the following chapters:
Chapter 2: Literature Review Summary – Presents a summary of the literature review findings, including a high-level summary of the “why” of transit equity goals and measures, a compilation of goals and performance measures collected from agency documentation, a discussion of the public engagement-related goals and measures, highlights of the impacts and changes for both riders and agencies that stem from equity goals and measures, and a compilation of the big-picture challenges that face transit agencies.
Chapter 3: Data Collection – Describes the data collection process and subsequent findings.
Chapter 4: Regional Case Examples – Outlines five case examples compiled to showcase successful practices among transit agencies of different sizes and in different operating environments in North America.
Chapter 5: Conclusion – Presents a summary of the previous chapters with emphasis on key takeaways and opportunities for future research.
