DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF PERFORMANCE MEASURES FOR RURAL PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION OPERATORS

Despite the increased interest in performance indicators for large transit systems, there has been no equivalent effort at establishing similar techniques for small and rural systems. This project has developed a methodology to evaluate the relative performance of operators of rural transit service funded through the Section 18 Program of the former Urban Mass Transportation Administration (now the Federal Transit Administration). It was found that the agencies could be compared using measures of cost efficiency, cost-effectiveness, service utilization, vehicle utilization, quality of service, labor productivity, and accessibility. The transit agencies and the Texas Department of Transportation can use these measures for analysis of performance trends, evaluation of overall system performance, transit planning, and technical assistance. The procedure uses a standard score methodology to compare the performance of individual agencies to the mean of all rural transit operators in Texas. It was determined that the use of peer groups of similar agencies would not significantly change the conclusions. Peer groups would, however, increase the time to prepare a performance evaluation, and the agencies within each peer group would change annually, making trend comparisons more difficult. Transit operators indicated a desire for information and suggestions from staff members of the Public Transportation Division of the Texas Department of Transportation on methods to improve performance. The findings indicate that more review of the statistics provided by the operators and greater communication between the operators and Public Transportation Division staff would increase the usefulness of the performance measures.