TRANSIT COST AND PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT

D B. Lee

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

1989

Subject Area

operations - performance, land use - planning, economics - finance, organisation - performance, place - urban

Keywords

Urban transit, Planning, Finance

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic, hierarchial set of performance indicators for transit operations, that may be used as a diagnostic aid in the evaluation of a given transport system. The procedure may be used for comparisons between routes and systems. It can be used to address both the internal management of the system and the external conditions that create or constrain management options. The performance indicators are cast at three distinct levels. The first broad level summarizes the overall cost-revenue performance of a transit operation. The second level provides more detail, for instance allowing for separate analysis of functional distributions, e.g. operations versus maintenance versus administration, of expenditure, of productivity distributions, (e.g. consumption of physical resources), service utilization, and revenue. The third level provides for the detailed examination of components of cost and hence leads to improved diagnosis of problem areas. The procedure was designed for use with published data. The UMTA Section 15 data for 50 of the largest transit properties in the U.S.A. are used to illustrate the application of the procedure. Some interesting results emerge.

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