Transit Stops, Stations, and Transfer Facilities: Evaluating Performance from the Perspective of Transit System Managers

What makes a good transit stop, station, or transfer facility? The answer depends on who you ask. Passengers, transit system managers, adjacent businesses and residents, and local governments that host them can all have strong, and sometimes conflicting, ideas about what makes a good stop or station. This paper examines this question from the transit system managers’ perspective, who must consider both the logistical and political factors inherent to transit operations and the perspectives of customers they seek to attract to their systems. To do this we administered an online survey methodology to estimate magnitudes of perceived importance for a wide array of possible stop/station objectives. Much of the previous literature on transit stops/stations is descriptive, often listing positive attributes of a good stop/station with little explanatory analysis of (1) how listed factors contribute to transit service connectivity, (2) tradeoffs among factors, or (3) their relative importance. This paper specifically addresses this third shortcoming, creating a ranked list of objectives by operators’ stated level of importance. In a nutshell respondents believe that safety, security, and the absence of pedestrian/vehicle conflicts are most important to a good stop/station, followed by ease of transferring and cost-effectiveness. Many other factors rank much further below these. These findings suggest that transit operators are well aware of travelers’ perceptions of the importance of “out-of-vehicle” travel experiences in defining the transit experience.