Memorandum

Date      May 18, 2017

TO           Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization

FROM     Karl H. Quackenbush, Executive Director

RE           Work Program for Support for MBTA Service Standards Development

Action Required

Review and approval

Proposed Motion

That the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), upon the recommendation of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), vote to approve the work program for Support for MBTA Service Standards Development, presented in this memorandum

Project Identification

Unified Planning Work Program Classification

Agency and Other Client Transportation Planning Studies and Technical Analyses

CTPS Project Number

11414

Client

MBTA

Project Supervisor: Laurel Paget-Seekins

CTPS Project Supervisors

Principal: Annette Demchur

Manager: Steven Andrews

Funding

Future MBTA Contract

Impact on MPO Work

The MPO staff has sufficient resources to complete this work in a capable and timely manner. By undertaking this work, the MPO staff will neither delay the completion of nor reduce the quality of any work in the Unified Planning Work Program.

Background

Recently, the Central Transportation Planning Staff (CTPS) assisted the MBTA in a two-phase study to update the MBTA’s Service Delivery Policy, the primary tool that the MBTA uses to guide the design and evaluation of transit services to meet the needs of the transit-riding public. In Phase I of the study, CTPS updated some of the data sources used for service planning and evaluation, and developed some new tools to process and analyze data. In Phase 2 of the study, CTPS worked with the MBTA and two advisory groups to revise the MBTA’s service standards to reflect the enhanced capabilities for collecting and analyzing data, and to revise the service evaluation process. Some of the service standards and associated metrics and thresholds proposed by the Service Delivery Policy Working Group require further development and refinement. The MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board approved the revised Service Delivery Policy, with the understanding that the Service Delivery Policy is a living document and that work would continue to refine the existing metrics and to develop new metrics.

Objective

The primary objective of this study is to work with the MBTA and other partners to refine the existing service standards and metrics, develop new metrics, and automate the calculation of service performance on some of the existing metrics.

Work Description

Task 1  Develop and Evaluate New Metrics

The Service Delivery Policy Working Group identified several potential service metrics that were not included in the final Service Delivery Policy because the MBTA did not have the data or processes set up to calculate the metrics. CTPS will evaluate some of these unused metrics to determine if they should be included in a future revision to the Service Delivery Policy.

Products of Task 1

New metrics

Task 2  Refine Existing Metrics and Methodologies

In some cases, the adopted metrics need additional refinement—for example, the MBTA may want to continue reviewing different implementations of the cost-benefit ratio measure. In other cases, the MBTA may want to review additional datasets to improve the accuracy of existing metrics.

Product of Task 2

Refined metrics and methodologies

Task 3  Automate Frequency-of-Service and Span-of-Service Metric Calculation

The calculation of service performance for the minimum frequency-of-service and span-of-service metrics could be automated using easily accessible, publicly available data. In this task, to the extent feasible, CTPS will automate the calculation of each metric.

Products of Task 3

Tools to automate metric calculations

Estimated Schedule

It is estimated that this project will be completed 12 months after work commences. The proposed schedule, by task, is shown in Exhibit 1.

Estimated Cost

The total cost of this project is estimated to be $30,000. This includes the cost of 10.4 person-weeks of staff time and overhead at the rate of 102.70 percent. A detailed breakdown of estimated costs is presented in Exhibit 2.

KQ/SAP/sap