UC Irvine Institute of Transportation Studies

This research uses FY 1980 Section 15 data to identify and test a set of seven key performance indicators that are useful for nationwide, fixed route, motor bus transit performance evaluation. These indicators can be used together or individually to assess transit performance, for a single system or for cross-system comparison. The second year of Section 15 data is also used to evaluate the validity of an earlier analysis based on the first year data. 

Rigorous cleaning, verifying and grooming procedures carried out before analysis insured that the current input data was as complete as possible. Careful decisions regarding which variables to keep and/or drop from the analysis provided the best possible set of performance indicators available in the FY 1980 Section 15 data. 

Use of four parallel data sets and several exploratory factor analyses detected the simple underlying structure of the data. Rigorous testing verified the structure as the most salient performance dimensions. The small subset of seven key performance indicators was identified and tested as representative of these dimensions. 

Results here are compared to the earlier analysis. The strength of the current research lies in both the quality of the data used and the rigor with which it was tested throughout. A strong case is made for using the seven identified performance indicators for motor bus transit performance evaluation.