Re-thinking passenger experience as a pillar of transit recovery

Photo courtesy Busologist (Flickr)

Yesterday, I decided to pick up the Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual (TCQSM) for some light bedtime reading. Okay fine, it wasn't bedtime reading, but I did read it! At least portions of it. For those who are uninitiated, the TCQSM is the authority on standards, metrics, and methods used for the evaluation of public transit service. It is published by the Transportation Research Board's Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) and a common reference for anyone who works in transit in a technical capacity.

I have been thinking a lot about transit recovery in the post-pandemic world. To sum up my previous thoughts:

• The old peak-centric model of relying on the 9-5 five-day workweek is gone
• Transit agencies can't rely on employer return-to-office mandates and park-and-rides to save them
• The new transit normal will focus more on decentralization but that doesn't mean less density: stronger commercial and residential neighborhood centers with more corridor growth is warranted
• Service reliability is key and requires reliable operator staffing and fleet availability

Although the first three points are a direct result from the COVID system shock of the past few years, that last one is not really new. The success of good transit has always meant reliable and quality service, attributes that the TCQSM is directly meant to address.

One other concern that has been on the minds of transit riders and advocates alike, albeit a more sensitive one, is the issue of crime, homelessness, and drug use aboard transit. I concede this can trigger a politically-charged debate, but I think there can be a valuable takeaway that all can agree on, especially as we think about service quality a la the TCQSM.

The TCQSM focuses on a litany of service quality measures, primarily focused on operational standards and service availability, like loading, reliability, etc. Buried in the report is also content related to security, appearance, and comfort, areas that have beleaguered transit systems in recent years.

Transit Security

There should be no debate that public transit should be a safe and secure place for all riders. Crime, whether violent or otherwise, has no place on transit, let alone broader society. As it concerns the topic of security, the TCQSM defines it as such:

Security involves the potential for becoming the victim of a crime while using transit. It also covers irritants, such as encountering unruly passengers or having to listen to someone else's music, that may not be an actual threat but nevertheless makes passengers uneasy that the system's code of conduct is not being enforced.

In chapter 5, the report references TCRP Report 88 in suggesting three potential measures:

• Onboard crime rate
• Ratio of security officers to transit vehicles
• Prevalence of safety/security devices on vehicles / at stations

As far as I'm aware, King County Metro does not directly report these metrics publicly although some data to this effect is available through the National Transit Database. Metro does have a dashboard for assaults on operators, which tend be rare, and certainly not inclusive of passenger-to-passenger altercations. More rigorous data collection and broader transparency around security measures can help 1) highlight hot spots to inform resource allocation, 2) give the public a chance to make personal decisions about their transit options.

As it concerns proactive solutions, regardless where people might land on policing more broadly, there are three general deterrents for criminal activity onboard transit: the driver/operator, the presence of security personnel and security devices, and the volume of other passengers (in the vein of the Jacobsian principle of eyes on the street).

Although fare enforcement is somewhat making its way back, transit operators should be empowered to request fare payment firmly without provoking an altercation. This was generally the policy prior to COVID and should set the minimum standard moving forward. Operators are also able to directly request security or policing resources via radio, but this means that emergency response protocols have to be able to deploy said resources in an expeditious manner. Until that happens, operators should have latitude to act with discretion so they can protect themselves and passengers as needed.

The presence of security and law enforcement officers can provide a deterrent, but these personnel are more likely to be seen on Link or RapidRide routes. I personally have never witnessed officers riding other fixed routes, but this may obviously be subarea-dependent. As the Seattle Times reported last year, Sound Transit has beefed up unarmed security but armed police officers, who are supplied through the King County Sheriff's Office, are still well below desired staffing levels.

The TCQSM also speaks to irritants" or factors that may not present an actual bodily harm, but are nuisances that can make a transit trip unpleasant. This is a gray area because there is no well-tested quantitative measure that can capture the pervasiveness of such irritants. Flagrant offenses, like smoking or using drugs onboard, may violate the passenger code of conduct and can be logged. But other things, like the hygiene of other passengers, are subjective and difficult to track, let alone report.

Passenger Environment

Tracking complaints is also a recommended measure of service quality. Per Metro's own dashboard, complaints per million boardings have spiked since COVID began. Part of this is the result of the ridership decimation that happened after the pandemic. But I would surmise that complaints simply serve as a good inverse proxy for service quality. The riders that have stuck to transit are the ones who have more intimately experienced its many issues firsthand in recent times.

Beyond tracking complaint volume, the TCQSM also emphasizes the need for agencies to conduct passenger environment surveys, which can ask riders to rate different attributes numerically. This gives insight into why complaints may spike or drop. Based on TCRP Report 47, such surveys can ask about presence of graffiti, presence of offensive odors, cleanliness of vehicles and stations, perceived safety from crime, and more.

Both Metro and Sound Transit will conduct rider surveys on a regular basis, and the greater frequency with which this is happening is commendable. From both Sound Transit's Summer 2022 Passenger Experience Survey and Metro's 2021 Rider and Non-Rider Survey, safety, comfort, and cleanliness were all major themes from survey respondents.

In addition to the regular inflow of online comment forms, one other data source transit agencies might consider is the vast array of social media comments and messages. Advanced off-the-shelf machine learning and natural language processing tools now exist to process these datapoints at scale, to both detect sentiment and extract themes.

Bathroom placard for custodial requests, still from Port of Seattle

Proactive solutions to improve the passenger environment and experience are known, but difficult to improve upon. Take cleanliness, for example. Transit vehicles are regularly deep-cleaned and operators are supposed to sweep vehicles for litter after each trip. But problem spots can be missed or ignored, particularly at stops and stations where graffiti and litter are more prevalent. In these cases, a streamlined reporting method (via text, app, or QR code) should be built so that the right personnel can respond right away. Air travelers who frequent SEA will be familiar with a good model of this: bathroom placards with simple messaging on how flyers can call the attention of custodial staff right away.

Concluding Thoughts

I have had more than one acquaintance tell me they stopped riding transit because of perceived safety and comfort issues. It's easy to be hand-wavy with these types of concerns, but they are legitimate issues that create barriers to getting people back on transit. As agencies continue to focus on maintaining service reliability in the short-term and right-sizing service in the long-term, it's imperative that the passenger experience also remains a focal point of transit recovery.

While I was still in-progress with this piece, I had the chance to skim coverage of Wednesday's Regional Transit Committee's meeting, as covered by Ryan Packer at The Urbanist. There was some additional attention on Seattle city councilmember Rob Saka's particular emphasis on cleanliness as a requisite for transit expansion.

I don't think we need to risk getting sucked into a false dichotomy here. A clean and safe passenger environment is important to transit growth as is laying track and expanding service hours. Both can be true. At the same time, it's a virtuous thing to acknowledge the great strides that have been made to improve the passenger experience since the pandemic started. Although we're not there yet, we're certainly headed in the right direction. It only behooves us to keep up that momentum.