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Campaign Background
Southeastern Pennsylvania
Transportation Authority (SEPTA)
Links
Campaign Background:
In April of 2003, Clean Air Council embarked on a one-year
pilot study of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation
Authority's (SEPTA) city-based transit services. The goal
of the project is to determine what Philadelphia bus, subway-elevated
rail, and trolley (light rail) riders consider most important
in a transit system and to assist SEPTA in ensuring that
citizen input is included in their performance assessment
procedures. The Council's campaign to improve SEPTA services
will focus on strengthening rider input in the agency's
performance assessment procedures.
Clean Air Council has been working on
transportation issues since its inception in 1967. Concerned
with the negative impacts of the automobile on air quality,
the Council has been a staunch supporter of public transit
in the City of Philadelphia. Working side-by-side with SEPTA,
the Council has made the improvement of public transit a
key goal of its Sustainable Transportation program. The
Council has placed a high priority on enhancing public participation
in transit assessment because it feels that this is a critical
component in maintaining current ridership and bringing
new riders to the city's buses, regional rail lines, trolleys,
and subway-elevated rail lines.
State law requires SEPTA to conduct an
annual evaluation, covering such areas as on-time performance,
operating cost per passenger, and number of employee and
passenger accidents. In addition to the annual evaluation,
SEPTA collects customer complaints and feedback once a year,
which the agency includes in its annual customer satisfaction
survey. Within its annual survey, SEPTA measures rider satisfaction
levels with various aspects of SEPTA's operations, including
on-time performance, frequency of service, courtesy of staff,
cleanliness, and safety. While the results of this survey
are used to measure improvements in service, this once-a-year
survey allows for limited input from riders who have more
specific suggestions and makes it difficult for the agency
to collect and evaluate ongoing citizen comments (see SEPTA's
Performance Assessment). In addition, SEPTA's twenty-nine
member Citizen Advisory Committee is entrusted with the
mission of representing SEPTA ridership.
In the beginning stages of the campaign,
the Council will be researching and evaluating SEPTA's performance
assessment processes in comparison to state-of-the-art performance
measures used in the transit industry. As part of its attempt
to include citizens in its campaign, the Council will be
conducting three separate focus groups, bringing in riders
to discuss what criteria is important to them in assessing
public transit in the city.
Southeastern Pennsylvania
Transportation Authority (SEPTA): SEPTA is the fifth
largest public transit system in the United States and has
two subway-elevated rail lines, eight light rail (trolley)
routes, seven regional rail lines, and over 115 bus routes
that carry nearly one million commuters daily throughout
the five county Philadelphia metropolitan area, as well
as to Wilmington, Delaware and Trenton, New Jersey. SEPTA
itself is a Commonwealth agency, authorized by the Pennsylvania
General Assembly in 1963 and incorporated in 1964.
SEPTA's city transportation system is
essential to maintaining mobility within the City of Philadelphia.
Quality public transportation is critical for continued
economic growth.
SEPTA's Performance Assessment:
Pennsylvania Law, Section 26 (1991), provides a legal basis
for the performance measures implemented by SEPTA.
The law requires that SEPTA conduct an
annual evaluation on four areas: 1) utilization of routes;
2) staffing ratios (ratio of administrative employees to
operating employees; number of vehicles per mechanic); 3)
productivity measures (vehicle miles per employee; passenger
and employee accidents per 100,000 vehicle miles; on-time
performance; miles between road calls), and 4) fiscal-indicators
(operating cost per passenger; subsidy per passenger and
operating ratio). The law requires a formal public comment
period prior to the adoption of the evaluation measures.
It does not, however, foresee any other formal opportunities
for public involvement in the process of setting evaluation
measures.
Pennsylvania law specifically requires
that customer feedback or complaint data be monitored by
SEPTA. The agency collects such information in its annual
Customer Satisfaction Survey.
In its annual reports, SEPTA includes
a section that summarizes the agency's performance by the
approved evaluation measures described above, and according
to a list of adopted goals that have been submitted to PennDOT
under PA Act 26. These include on-time performance, mean
distance between failures, satisfactory response to public
information calls, meeting scheduled service requirements,
minimizing customer complaints, and meeting ADA trip requests.
This report must be released to the public at the time of
issuance.
SEPTA's strategic planning process, embodied
in its annual update of its Five-Year Plan for Strategic
Change, holds managers accountable for meeting goals to
improve performance. By mandate, improvements are supposed
to be measured against internal data analysis and through
the annual Customer Satisfaction Survey. This annual update
is a public document. Some of the means employed to achieve
customer-oriented goals include conducting market research
to identify and prioritize customer amenities, upgrading
of customer communications systems at stations, and develop
customer communications program during in-service delays.
SEPTA also collects complaints through
its Customer Service Department by telephone, in writing,
and through its website. Its official position is that these
complaints are investigated and that complainants receive
formal responses. However, SEPTA does not disseminate information
on the number of complaints it receives, nor to how many
complaints they actually respond.
Links: For more
information on SEPTA, similar projects in other cities,
and for some great pictures of SEPTA's different buses and
trains, check out these websites:
SEPTA- http://www.septa.org
New York City's Straphangers Campaign-http://www.straphangers.org
Chicago's Campaign for Better Transit-
http://www.bettertransit.com
The Clean Air Bus Transit Page- http://www.cleanairbus.tk
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