Creating Improved Performance Measures That Evaluate Public Transit as a Ladder to Opportunity

Public transit performance measures do not always emphasize the important issues for environmental justice (EJ) populations.  This study uses community-based participatory research (CBPR) to create new performance measures for public transit that focus on economic viability, equity, health, and access to opportunity. These performance measures can help transit agencies or other transportation organizations provide better transportation services. These metrics may also better capture the differences in needs between captive and choice riders. This study considers the existing state-of-the-practice performance measures, but by changing the focus to EJ populations, the researchers target the riders with the greatest need. The research approach creates a community advisory board (CAB) that consists of transportation professionals, partners, and other stakeholders to engage the community in order to identify the needs and priorities of EJ populations. The CAB and the researchers assess the list of current transit performance measures for potential gaps in their ability to consider the needs of captive riders.

The CAB and the community participants share their perspectives through focus groups and surveys to generate the information necessary to propose additional candidate performance measures.  The study evaluates the candidate measures based on their ease-to-use, reliability, availability, complexity of interpretation, costs related to collection and use, and timeliness.

These new performance measures reorients the assessment of public transit to the populations that need it the most by considering economic viability, equity, health, and access to opportunity. These new performance measures will be more flexible and capable of assessing innovative public transit strategies and partnerships and innovative alternatives to typical fixed
route public transit.  Furthermore, the public transit service may be used as an agent of positive change rather than only a source of development.