Background
Public transit agencies across the United States are facing significant challenges in maintaining assets and infrastructure in an adequate operational condition. With limited funding and aging assets, many agencies are struggling to keep pace with growing reinvestment needs. A key obstacle is the lack of a consistent, industry-wide definition and set of measures for what constitutes an acceptable "state of good repair."
Without clear guidelines, agencies employ varying approaches to defining, assessing, and prioritizing the state of good repair for their assets. This inconsistency makes it difficult to benchmark performance, justify funding requests, and ensure effective stewardship of public resources across the transit industry. There is a critical need to establish a common framework and language for discussing the state of good repair that accounts for the diverse modes, asset portfolios, and operating environments of different transit agencies. By documenting current practices, this synthesis can provide a foundation for developing more uniform state of good repair policies, performance targets, and decision-support tools to optimize lifecycle management of transit capital assets.
Synthesis Objective
The objective of this synthesis is to document the current practices employed by public transit agencies to define, assess, and manage the "state of good repair" for their capital assets and infrastructure. Specifically, the synthesis shall capture how agencies interpret and operationalize the concept of the state of good repair across different asset categories such as revenue vehicles, facilities, guideway elements, systems, and stations. In addition, the synthesis shall examine the methodologies, data sources, and performance metrics used to evaluate asset condition and remaining useful life. The synthesis shall also explore agency policies, prioritization frameworks, and decision-making processes for programming the state of good repair projects into capital plans. Lastly, the synthesis shall investigate funding strategies, accounting treatments, and reporting approaches related to state of good repair expenditures and targets. By synthesizing these current practices, the effort aims to provide a common language and framework for discussing the state of good repair challenges faced by the transit industry.
Information To Be Gathered
At a minimum, the contractor shall gather the following information:
- Agency definitions and terminology used for "state of good repair" across different asset classes (e.g. vehicles, facilities, guideway, systems).
- Condition rating systems and criteria employed to inspect and assess asset state of repair.
- Data sources and collection methods used to populate asset inventories and condition assessments.
- Methodologies and models for forecasting asset remaining useful life and decay curves.
- Performance measures and metrics calculated to track and report on the state of good repair.
- Asset management systems, software tools, and databases used for state of good repair analysis.
- Decision support processes for prioritizing state of good repair projects and investments.
- Capital programming procedures to incorporate state of good repair needs into agency plans.
- Accounting structures and financial reporting approaches for state of good repair expenditures
- Funding sources and financing mechanisms utilized for state of good repair initiatives.
- State of good repair targets, benchmarks or performance standards established by agencies.
- State of good repair policies, strategic plans, or governing legislation and regulations.
The focus will be on gathering information about the specific practices, tools, and frameworks agencies currently use related to defining, measuring, and managing the state of good repair for their transit assets.
How the Information will be Gathered
- Literature Review
- Survey of transit public transit agencies
- Case examples (a minimum of five, identified from the surveys)
