Rural Transit Performance Measurement

TRB's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 141: A Methodology for Performance Measurement and Peer Comparison in the Public Transportation Industry explores the use of performance measurement and benchmarking as tools to help identify the strengths and weaknesses of a transit organization, set goals or performance targets, and identify best practices to improve performance.

This report is a guidebook for transit managers and others interested in developing or improving performance-measurement systems for transit agencies or incorporating transit performance measures into regional decision-making processes. The guidebook provides a step-by-step process for developing a performance-measurement program that includes both traditional and non-traditional performance indicators that address customer-oriented and community issues.

TCRP Report 136: Guidebook for Rural Demand-Response Transportation: Measuring, Assessing, and Improving Performance will be of interest to rural public transportation systems that provide demand-response transit (DRT) services and to the communities they serve. The Guidebook is a resource to assist DRT systems to measure, assess, and improve their performance, focusing on DRT systems in rural areas.

This synthesis will be of interest to transit practitioners and transportation professionals, including technical and research staff, as well as those working with them, with regard to the use of performance measures for the allocation of financial assistance to local transit agencies. The synthesis explores current perspectives, practices, and experiences. It focuses primarily on the extent to which traditional measures of transit performance such as internal measures of economic efficiency, service effectiveness, and productivity are used in allocating funds to transit. The report summarizes the experiences of a variety of transit agencies. In addition, it sought to capture key perspectives of transit and transportation professionals on the relationship between system performance and funding decisions and to identify barriers to more extensive use of performance measures in the allocation of funds for public transportation.

This summary was prepared by Paul Ryus, principal investigator, Kittelson & Associates, Inc.