TCRP Report 104: Public Transportation Board Effectiveness: A Self-Assessment Handbook provides a self-assessment process and tools to measure public transportation board effectiveness and provides references on how board characteristics can be changed to improve board effectiveness in various areas. The Handbook also identifies the characteristics of public transportation boards that influence transit system performance. The Handbook may be used by policymakers, transit chief executive officers (CEOs), appointing bodies, and legal advisors.
The companion document to the Handbook is the TCRP Project H-24A final report, The Public Transportation Board Effectiveness Study, which focuses on the findings of the research. The report describes the two major phases of the study: the expert workshop, which resulted in the board performance measures, and the Handbook field test results, which include participant comments and suggestions. In addition, the report offers a complete list of transportation board performance measures. This report is published as TCRP Web Document 24, available at https://www.trb.org/trb/publications/publications.asp.
This research builds on prior work done under TCRP Project H-24, which is published under TCRP Report 85: Public Transit Board Governance Guidebook. The purpose of TCRP Project H-24 was to develop a reference document that provides guidance to public transportation board members, general managers, and appointing bodies with respect to board powers, role, responsibilities, size, structure, organization, and composition. The TCRP Report 85 includes information on method of selection, compensation, term length, and committee structure of public transportation boards to define their organization and characteristics. It also is a "snapshot" of board organizational characteristics, with broad qualitative indicators of effectiveness, rather than a comprehensive analytical document.
Results of the prior study indicate that the development of an objective self-assessment process and tools that measure the effectiveness of a public transportation board would be useful. Such an assessment process and tools would provide information that could be used by boards of directors, appointing organizations/officials, and other entities to objectively assess public transportation board effectiveness.
AECOM Consult, Inc., in conjunction with The Mineta Institute and Will Scott & Co., LLC conducted the research for TCRP Project H-24A. To achieve the project's objective of developing a public transportation board self assessment process and tool, (1) a literature review was completed to identify the range of board assessment tools, (2) an expert workshop comprised of diverse transit board members and transit chief executive officers was held to select board performance measures, and (3) field tests were conducted to validate the Handbook. Based on the results of the expert workshop, performance measures were selected, and the Handbook was drafted and field tested by a cross section of U.S. transit agencies. Information, comments, and suggestions gathered from the expert workshop and field tests were incorporated in the Handbook.
Status: The handbook was published as TCRP Report 104. The contractor's final report is published as TCRP Web Document 24.
