Objectives

To determine whether Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (MTA) New York City Transit (Transit) and MTA Bus Company (MTA Bus) provide passenger service on all of their bus routes to meet minimum service frequency standards that are reasonable and consider the demand for service and other factors. We also sought to determine whether Transit and MTA Bus record and report accurate statistics on the operation of their buses to both management and the public, and where performance indicators are not met, whether Transit and MTA Bus take corrective actions. The audit covers the period January 1, 2015 to July 5, 2018.

About the Program

The MTA has six constituent agencies, two of which – Transit and MTA Bus – provide bus service within New York City. Transit and MTA Bus report key performance statistics monthly to the MTA Board’s Transit and Bus Committee (Committee), and the public can access these statistics on the MTA’s website in the monthly Committee meeting books and on the “Transparency, Performance Indicators” menu.

Key bus performance indicators include Wait Assessment (WA) and Mean Distance Between Service Interruptions (MDBSI). WA is the percentage of bus arrivals that occur within 3 minutes of the scheduled interval time during peak periods or within 5 minutes of the scheduled interval time during non-peak hours. Global Positioning System devices on MTA’s buses report their location and bus departure time. This data is used by Transit and MTA Bus for multiple purposes and is a factor in calculating WA. Since February 2017, WA is reported monthly to the Committee as a “system” statistic, covering both Transit and MTA Bus, for weekdays only. The MDBSI measures the average distance traveled by a bus before an interruption in service occurs. MTA Bus also monitors on-time performance: the requirement that each bus trip of a particular route must not be earlier than 1 minute before or not be later than 5 minutes after its scheduled departure time at each of its assessed (terminal or en route) time points.

Schedulers at both Transit and MTA Bus are responsible for reviewing the need for bus service and aim to schedule service that meets the demand within the official service guidelines. MTA Road Operations dispatching staff are responsible for overseeing bus service of both Transit and MTA Bus, making adjustments in service based on field conditions and addressing operational performance. (Road Operations is a unit within the Department of Buses, a division of Transit, but with responsibility for overseeing both Transit and MTA Bus operations).

Key Findings

• Transit’s Service Guidelines Manual (Guidelines) was issued in 2010 and revised in 2013. The Guidelines contain Transit and MTA Bus minimum service frequency standards; however, we found that the Guidelines are not always met. Further, there was insufficient documentation to determine if scheduled service was reasonable. In the absence of documentation to support how the number of buses placed into service was determined, there is a risk that the number of buses may have been inappropriate to meet customer needs.
• While MTA Bus relies on Traffic Checkers to gather bus ridership information, Transit relies on an advanced computer model based on automated fare card data to determine demand. Demand, in turn, is the basis of determining service under the Guidelines. The computer model relies on numerous assumptions. For instance, because fare card data does not include where the rider boarded and exited the bus, the model makes assumptions as to boarding and exiting points. Additionally, because even more limited information is available on cash and non-paying customers, trip information for these groups is created based on assumptions made by Transit’s Division of Operations Planning. The computer model’s algorithm was not provided and its assumptions are not documented; therefore, the accuracy of the model’s logic cannot be verified. According to Transit officials, they use Traffic Checkers to validate the information from the model. However, traffic checks were not done for 77 of 209 Transit routes (37 percent) during the period under review. Determinations made by Schedulers to provide more or less service than the official service Guidelines are not documented.
• Transit and MTA Bus record and report statistics on the operation of their buses to both management and the public; however, we question whether WA was always accurate. For the first six months of 2015, the MTA-reported WA was 75.5 percent, but we calculated 80.3 percent – a 4.8 percent difference. For September 2017, the MTA reported 76 percent WA, but we calculated 80.4 percent – a 4.4 percent difference. While in this case the number we calculated was higher, the month-to-month improvement was lower. Consistent and accurate calculation of performance metrics is very important over time in helping to understand whether on-time performance is improving. Although Road Operations officials told us they take corrective action to address WA declines, and they provided documents of the day-to-day actions taken to address issues that can impact WA during service, there was no support for actions taken to specifically address underlying causation. This is of concern, as during the period March 2016 to March 2017, Transit calculated WA declines of 5.9 percent in the Bronx and 4.4 percent in Brooklyn.
• Transit and MTA Bus calculate WA for weekends, but do not publish the statistic; ridership on the weekends is approximately 2.2 million.
• While the MTA has methods to address WA concerns, the plans and procedures it describes are reactive, not proactive, in addressing underlying causes for not meeting WA goals.

Key Recommendations

• Ensure the WA statistics reported to the Committee and the public are accurate.
• Document the procedure for creating the daily bus ridership file used for scheduling.
• Analyze the two methodologies used to assess demand for service and document the results that show the best outcome for the organization and customers.
• Calculate the weekend WA and share the results with the Committee and the public.
• Develop and document proactive corrective action plans and procedures to improve WA performance.