On October 11, 2022, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg spoke at a moderated town hall hosted by the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service. The participants discussed the implementation of the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). During the question and answer portion of the town hall, a student inquired how cities might effectively utilize BIL funding to incentivize ridership on public transportation. Secretary Buttigieg provided a simple yet intuitive answer: cities need to make the experience of riding public transportation more enjoyable for riders. But, if the answer is so intuitive, then why do public transportation agencies struggle to increase ridership?
Public Transit and the Ridership Crisis
Public transportation is in a state of ridership decline. Nationwide, rail ridership and bus ridership decreased by 3% and 15% respectively between 2012 and 2018. In DC alone, metrorail ridership decreased by over 20% between 2009 and 2019. These declines can be attributed to both external factors such as the increased availability of ride hailing service and affordability of vehicles as well as internal factors such as service quality decreases and fare increases. This trend became even worse during the COVID-19 pandemic due to many employees being placed on telework status and therefore not needing to commute to and from work.
Despite these trends, transit agencies find themselves in a unique situation. With more and more commuters returning to in-person work, transit ridership is slowly returning to pre-pandemic levels. Additionally, the BIL allocated $108 billion in funding for public transit agencies. Public transit agencies have the potential to capitalize on BIL funding and upward ridership trends to not only provide more service, but better, safer, more efficient service.
To bring back riders, transit agencies must understand why riders left in the first place. The decline in ridership is often attributed to maintenance and capital backlogs that cause systems to fall out of State of Good Repair (SGR). A systematic lack of funding and care has resulted in public transit systems that are unreliable, unsafe, and inefficient. Fresh in the minds of DC commuters is the derailment of the 7000 series railcars in October 2021, thus leading WMATA to remove 60% of the metrorail fleet from service. This past summer, the Federal Transit Agency (FTA) issued a scathing report on the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority’s (MBTA) internal safety practices. These are just two examples of a nationwide neglect of public transit systems. Failure to provide adequate service leads to frustrated passengers, thus increasing the likelihood that potential passengers will seek out alternative modes of transportation.
Therefore, it seems as though the answer to the public transit crisis is simple: improve capital management and safety practices to achieve SGR in transit systems. This is the prevailing philosophy in transportation policy. WMATA recently entered into a six-year, $12 billion capital funding agreement for the purpose of bringing the system to SGR status. The MBTA is also set to receive nearly $1 billion in BIL funding to improve capital assets and undertake safety projects. Aside from the BIL, the federal government offers several SGR discretionary grant funds to public transit systems. Increasing funding for public transit systems is never a bad idea, but it is not the silver bullet that policymakers believe it is. Improved funding means improved performance, but does it mean increased ridership?
The Consumer Disconnect
The answer to the above question lies in one key finding of the transportation literature: consumers’ perception of service does not perfectly correlate with service provided. A study conducted at Karlstad University in Sweden found that subjective measures of consumer satisfaction do not perfectly equate to transit system performance. This key discovery may not only explain ridership trends, but can also lend helpful insight as transit agencies navigate the post-COVID world and attempt to lure back riders.
The root cause of this problem is that there is a discrepancy between perceived service quality and provided service quality, and transit agencies tend to focus on the latter. Transit agencies measure quality of service through objective, measurable Quality of Service (QOS) indicators, such as on-time performance and customer injury rates. Transit agencies assume that QOS indicators are adequate measures of perceived service quality, and therefore improved QOS equates to improved perceptions of service. The finding that consumer perceptions of service do not perfectly correlate with objective measures of service quality discredits the underlying assumption that internal performance indicators are adequate substitutes for direct consumer engagement.
A potential impact of this phenomenon is that consumers may avoid public transit due to overly negative perceptions of the service provided. For example, safety is a very important determinant of public transit ridership. However, consumers of public transit are likely to vastly overestimate the likelihood of a crime being committed against them while riding public transit relative to the actual risk. It was found that citizens who perceived a transit system as “safe” are 22% more likely to utilize public transit services, but perceived safety is based on several subjective influences. By overestimating safety, or lack thereof, consumers may opt to seek out alternative forms of transportation despite transit agencies reporting adequate safety performance.
Another commonly used and misunderstood QOS indicator is on-time performance. On-time performance in transit systems is defined by the percentage of trains and/or buses arriving at their destined terminals as scheduled. However, this does not take into account consumer attitudes regarding frequency and on-time performance. For example, the most recent Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) performance report indicated that the MTA subway system operated at approximately 81% on-time performance in Fiscal Year 2022. However, the results of the Customer Counts survey administered during the same time period indicated that only 49% of customers were satisfied with service frequency. The data support the conclusion that there is a disconnect between consumer perceptions of service and the service provided by transit systems.
Call to Action: What can be done?
These findings call into question the basic philosophy behind public transportation policy that more service will mean more riders. The answer to this dilemma is not just more service, but more service and better service. The policy remedy best suited for this problem is for public transportation agencies to conduct annual, comprehensive consumer preference surveys to identify key areas where consumers believe they are failing. This article is not suggesting that this is the only policy solution to the woes of public transit, but it must be part of any larger policy change. Consumer preferences, while subjective, must be understood in order to improve the service offered by public transit systems.
In Fall 2021, the MTA launched its first-ever Customers Count survey. This comprehensive survey was administered to over 8.1 million MTA passengers. Rather than reporting measures such as “percentage of trips on-time,” MTA provided the number of customers actually satisfied with headways and timeliness of public transit in New York. Most public transit agencies report customer satisfaction in annual performance reports but few define what a satisfied customer is. This would be a helpful framework for public transit agencies to adopt nationwide.
With $108 billion in federal funds, public transit agencies stand to massively benefit from the BIL. While lack of public transit funding has historically been a major contributing factor to ridership declines, reversing the negative ridership trends requires a deeper understanding of public transit user preferences. In order to understand how to best use federal funds to improve public transit and increase ridership, public transit agencies must put forth a deliberate effort to understand their riders and what they want. Then, and only then, can transit agencies understand their customer base and take the actions necessary to reverse the decades-long negative trend in ridership.
Christopher Wolf (He/Him/His) is a junior editor with the Georgetown Public Policy Review and a second-year MPP student at the McCourt School of Public Policy. Chris worked as a transit policy research intern this past summer and is currently interning as a program analyst with the Government Accountability Office. When not at school or work, you can find Chris in one of Arlington’s many coffee shops, plane spotting at Gravelly point, or chilling at home with his pet cat Appa.
