Transit Stops and Stations: Transit Managers’ Perspectives on Evaluating Performance

Passengers, transit managers, adjacent businesses and residents, and local governments all can have strong, and sometimes conflicting, ideas about what makes a good transit stop or station. This paper examines stops and stations from the transit agency’s perspective; transit managers must consider both the logistical and political factors inherent to transit operations as well as the perspectives of customers they seek to attract and retain. An online survey of U.S. transit systems was administered to estimate magnitudes of managers’ perceived importance of an array of stop/station attributes and objectives to provide a quantitative and objective summary of the collective wisdom of U.S. transit managers. This complements the mostly qualitative and case-study research on this topic. Using a sophisticated nonparametric ranking method, an estimate of the transit agency’s perspective on stops and stations was produced. Respondents clearly believe that safety and security are most important to a good stop/station, followed by ease of transferring and cost-effectiveness. Comfort and aesthetic factors rank much further below these.