Transit Stops and Stations: Transit Managers’ Perspectives on Evaluating Performance 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. Introduction Unlike door-to-door travel by foot, bicycle, taxi, or private vehicle, public transit passengers typically must wait for and transfer between buses and trains. As such, Journal of Public Transportation, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2009 60 the travel time spent outside of transit vehicles constitutes an important, and under-studied, part of transit travel. However, it is rarely a simple matter to plan a good transit stop or station. Typically, many stakeholders have a say in the siting, design, and operation of the facility. It is often an intricate interaction of various stakeholders’ desires and constraints that results in the final design and siting of a stop or station. Often, so many stakeholders vigorously debate the location, scale, and character of transit stops and stations that frustrated practitioners conclude, “It’s all just politics!” In this paper, we attempt to clarify and quantify the objectives of the stakeholder who must balance the often-competing views on stops and stations—the transit agency. A systematic understanding of how transit managers view the relative importance of a wide array of transit stop and station attributes can help practitioners and scholars understand how siting, design, and operations decisions are made—and how they could be made better. While others have compiled best practices guides for transit agencies (see, for example, Fitzpatrick, Hall et al. 1996), our findings represent the collective wisdom and expertise of U.S. transit managers and provide a rigorous quantitative analysis of the perceived importance of various stop and station attributes. Research has shown that, when transit connectivity is poor, waits and transfers become burdensome for transit users and discourage transit use. Poor stop and station connectivity results in trips that are . . . frustrating, time-consuming, and costly, lowering service quality for users and making transit unattractive for new customers.... [Conversely, good connectivity is] reflected in a convenient and “seamless” transit system by reducing travel times, providing more reliable connections, making it easier to pay and ensuring that transfers are easy and safe. (Metropolitan Transportation Commission 2006) The scope and scale of wait/transfer sites vary significantly, from hundreds of thousands of simple bus stops around the U.S. marked by little more than a small sign on a pole, to elaborate and architecturally significant multi-modal commercial hubs, like Union Station in Washington, D.C. The attributes of these wait/ transfer facilities differ in many ways: physical size and configuration; number of lines, agencies, and modes served; traveler amenities; operating costs; and effects on neighboring communities. Systematically evaluating such heterogeneous places thus poses a significant analytical challenge.