APTA Comments on FTA Initiative Focusing on Transit Safety

APTA submitted comments to the FTA in response to a Request for Information (RFI) on its Family Friendly Transit data initiative. The initiative seeks input on how to assess public transportation service quality across five areas: safety and security, cleanliness, universal accessibility, real-time service data availability, and system reliability.

In its comments, APTA said it shares FTA’s goal of ensuring safe, clean, and efficient transit systems. As a result of the industry’s commitment to safety, traveling by public transportation is 10 times safer for passengers than traveling by car.

APTA strongly encouraged the agency to weigh the public benefit of establishing additional customer service metrics against the burden on public transit agencies to collect and report such information. “Data reporting is difficult and resource-intensive, and any new data collection and reporting should have a clear benefit for agencies and the riders they serve.”

While many agencies are already collecting information on the service quality performance areas listed in the RFI, APTA said there may be limited benefits to comparing a snapshot of the metrics industry-wide. Further, imposing a national standard could disrupt agencies’ ability to analyze their own data over time. APTA does not believe that every customer service metric lends itself to reporting to the National Transit Database or to be included in future iterations of FTA’s new Transit Moves America Dashboard.

APTA recommends that FTA outline a well-defined plan for how any such data would be used and encourages FTA to determine, for each customer service metric, the best way to achieve its objective. APTA provided further specific comments on each service quality performance area.