Best practices in transportation planning

The provision of cost efficient and effective bus transit service is the basic premise upon which transit service is developed and the goal that all public transportations agencies strive to achieve. To attain this goal, public transit agencies must design their services around clear and defined principles, as well as a process to monitor the results achieved and to respond accordingly. This requires service design standards, an effective performance measurement system, and a systematic and continuous service evaluation methodology. This research identifies existing best practices in transit service planning and develops a generic model approach that could be adapted and used by public transit agencies for fixed route bus transit service planning, specifically to include service design standards, service performance measurements, and a standard service evaluation methodology. This research effort provides a summary of best practices and provides a template process tool that can be adapted and customized for use by all sizes public of transit agencies.