Transit asset condition reporting

The purpose of this synthesis was to examine and document the current state of the practice in transit asset condition management. Transit asset management is defined here as a strategic planning process that supports informed capital investment planning and programming. It is said that “good” transit asset management can provide critical support in two key areas—establishing the level of need for infrastructure investment and programming the cost of effective investment. The report’s objective is to provide transit agencies and their federal, state, and local funding partners with a review of current practices in hopes of encouraging industry-wide discussion on standards and the data needed to measure conditions and use the information in making effective investment decisions. The report contains information derived from a literature review and the results of an industrial survey of the 50 largest multi-modal transit agencies in terms of operations size, which yielded an 82% response rate. Further, detailed case studies of innovative practices at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and the New York City Transit Authority describe the origin of each agency’s asset management system, how it is used, and how it evolved over time. Then two agencies were chosen to represent two distinct State of Good Repair systems that represent different approaches and that would likely have the most advanced asset management systems because of the complexity of their operations. These examples might help others identify opportunities and challenges for upgrading and increasing the consistency of their own transit asset condition reporting