Prioritization of Public Transportation Investments: A Guide for Decision-Makers (2021)

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1   e demand for public transportation investments far exceeds the funds available. While states and communities seek additional revenue sources to maintain current transit assets and serve rapidly changing travel markets, they need methods to help decide where to allocate their limited resources. is guide provides practical advice for trans- portation agencies looking to improve their prioritization practice for public transportation projects. e guide focuses on methods used to prioritize transit capital projects and on cross-modal decision-making, specically the comparison of public transit and non-transit projects. Using performance-based investment decision-making empowers transit-operating, regional, and state transportation agencies to be more accountable, transparent, and rigorous in an environment of limited funding and tough choices. is guide is committed to the idea that better evaluation can support better decision-making. At the same time, the guide tackles recognized challenges associated with shis toward more quantitative approaches. Transit projects seeking to compete for funding are oen at a disadvantage because they have benets that are either dicult to quantify or have traditionally been inadequately addressed by methods developed with highway capacity improvement projects in mind. As decision-makers work to support more sustainable portfolios of transportation infrastructure and services, they struggle to meaningfully compare outcomes across modes. Responding to this need, this guide is designed to support leadership, management, and technical and planning sta at metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), state depart- ments of transportation (DOTs), and public transit agencies as they • Identify objectives of public transportation projects that align with their specic context and community needs; • Select criteria that align with these objectives and suciently capture the full range of benets of public transportation investments; • Develop workable metrics given available resources, with an appropriate mix of quan- titative and qualitative evaluation; • Consider distributional and equity impacts; • Screen for potential shortfalls related to multimodal comparability and modal bias; • Understand the implications of choices regarding the selection, quantication, normal- ization, and weighting of criteria; and • Work toward structure, repeatability, and accountability in prioritization and project selection processes. S U M M A R Y Prioritization of Public Transportation Investments: A Guide for Decision-Makers What Makes for Effective Transit Prioritization? • “Widening the Lens” to capture the full range of transit benefits • Focusing on transit’s core purpose of providing access to opportunities, particularly for those with limited mobility options • Measuring progress toward objectives, relative to costs • Opting for simplified or qualitative measures for objectives that are important but not easily quantified • Addressing equity and distributional impacts in addition to aggregate outcomes • Testing and refinement over time

2 Prioritization of Public Transportation Investments: A Guide for Decision-Makers is guidebook identies realistic approaches to transit prioritization that are appro- priate to the realities of communities of dierent types and will make a dierence in “leveling the playing eld” when comparing and prioritizing capital investments across multiple modes. Figure 1 summarizes the benets of this guide. Key takeaways from the recommendations of the guide include: • Context matters. Transit prioritization cannot be one-size-ts-all. ere are multiple routes to success. • Successful transit prioritization builds on existing best practices for transportation investment prioritization. • Evaluation criteria can capture transit’s many benets for users and society. Emphasizing the right measures can help avoid disadvantaging transit in prioritization by capturing transit’s benets for users and society. • Some criteria apply only to public transportation investments, while others can be used to evaluate more than one mode. • Certain factors negatively impact the competitiveness of transit projects, but strategies exist for broadening criteria to make them more applicable to transit. • Equity scores oer an objective consideration of distributional equity. • e multiple-objective decision analysis approach (MODA) oers a useful structure for transit and cross-modal prioritization. • Testing and renement over time demonstrate an ongoing commitment to eective transit prioritization. Figure 1. Benets of this guide.