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Mass Transit has always been challenged by securing funding for all the maintenance, rehabilitation and new construction projects their communities need.
The sheer number of vehicles on city roads each day carrying people on their daily commutes is massive and can lead to gridlock. It contributes to overarching problems such as rising tensions, increased fuel use, higher amounts of air pollution, and slower commuting times.
Deciding which projects to fund and the most efficient sequence in which to build them will always be a high-stakes, high-risk endeavor.
Prioritizing a portfolio of mass transit projects is especially complex and difficult. No mass transit director wants to explain to oversight committees, the media or the public why they re-built roads that service only a small population while allowing vital infrastructure to fail.
Cities can address the issue through an evolution of their planning work to build systems that are easily navigable and that are designed to get “smarter” over time.
As cities grow, residential and commercial real estate move further away from the city center. This decentralization leads to not only increasingly complex transit and road systems, but also to longer commutes and traffic woes.
Transit agencies could work towards smarter routes that include more direct routing with fewer stops during certain hours, or shorter routes with more frequent stops during others.
Despite having ample data and institutional staff knowledge, Mass Transit organizations typically lack a standard decision model for objectively comparing and ranking project types and community needs. They can’t explain why they found one county’s roads more important than another’s train station.
As a result, prioritization is frequently driven more by politics rather than merit. Transit agencies and city governments can take steps towards quicker and more cost-effective systems for getting people where they need to go.
Using a cloud-based software, like Decision Lens, replaces unstructured, freewheeling debate and political pressure.
With a systematic prioritization methodology, Mass Transit can streamline the decision process from months to days, drive consensus between stakeholders and provide full accountability and transparency into how results are determined.
This results in a multi-year investment plan that delivers much higher value and captures project benefit across asset types.
Take a look at our white paper to learn more.
