Guidebook: Managing Operating Costs for Rural and Small Urban Public Transit Systems (RMC 6694)
This guidebook is a resource for rural and small urban transit agency managers to use in better understanding, predicting, and managing operational costs. Doing so can improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability of public transit in the community served. The guide is a framework for assessing current transit agency operating costs and tools to predict future costs and is presented in three parts.
Part 1 introduces the fundamentals of transit operating costs and discusses what drives them. Using real-world examples, part 2 looks at the impact of component costs on an agency’s bottom line to help managers prioritize where to optimize spending to get the biggest bang for their buck. Part 3 provides practical tools to help managers allocate costs by service type and conduct market analyses to improve services offered consumers. Get the Report
TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Research Results Digest 373: A Toolkit for Reporting Rural and Specialized Transit Data—Making Transit Count presents the results of an analysis of automated transit data collection and analysis procedures in state department of transportation transit units. 