On July 26, 2016, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) released a final rule on transit asset management. It is part of a series of new federal performance-measurement rules initiated by the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) Act in 2012 and largely retained in the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act in 2015. A previously issued rule covers highway safety, and others have been proposed for transit safety, highway pavement and bridge condition, and congestion, reliability, freight, and emissions reduction. This Policy Update reviews the new rule's major components and its relationship to metropolitan planning, while describing recent progress in transit asset management by our region.
The FTA defines Transit Asset Management as a "model that uses asset condition to help prioritize funding to achieve or maintain transit networks in a state of good repair." For transit as well as for highways, asset management is a proven technique for cost efficiency, potentially providing superior outcomes within constrained budgets. Just as important, by tying asset condition to performance measures, asset management also provides a framework for analyzing the performance impacts of various financial planning scenarios, demonstrating how increased investments improve system performance.
Main provisions of new rule
Some notable requirements of the new rule are as follows. First, each public transportation provider -- in northeastern Illinois, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), Pace Suburban Bus, and Metra -- must develop and implement its own transit asset management (TAM) plan. These plans must contain an asset inventory, condition assessments of inventoried assets, a prioritized list of investments to improve state of good repair (SGR), and various implementation activities. The rule would require an initial TAM plan to be completed by every transit provider by October 1, 2018. The plans are to be updated every four years and must consider funding levels and funding sources that are reasonably available each fiscal year. The TAM update cycle is also to coincide with major updates to the transportation improvement program for which CMAP is responsible as the region's federally designated metropolitan planning organization (MPO).
Second, the rule specifies four performance measures for capital asset condition (described in more detail below), which transit agencies would need to track over time. Third, the rule directs transit agencies to set annual performance targets for those measures. For example, if 10 percent of an agency's track is in poor condition, it might set a target of 9 percent for the following year based on an assessment of funding availability and the agency's ability to complete track maintenance projects. In this example, the target represents an improvement in conditions, but the target could allow for declining conditions as well. The rule does not contain penalties for agencies with declining asset condition. The initial targets are to be set three months after the rule is finalized, that is by January 1, 2017, well before the TAM plans are due, and revised at least annually. Fourth and last, additional information related to capital asset condition and annual condition targets is to be reported to the National Transit Database, a repository of statistics about transit systems in the U.S.
Transit asset management in northeastern Illinois
Chicago's transit service boards have been engaged in asset management activities for many years. The Regional Transportation Authority (RTA), which has been helping coordinate regional efforts to track transit asset condition and assess capital needs, made its first comprehensive inventory of capital assets in 1987. Since then, the RTA has continued to refine its approach to capital needs assessment. Supplemented by grants from the FTA and CMAP's Unified Work Program, the RTA funded work to develop an Asset Inventory and Condition Assessment Guide and Capital Optimization Support Tool (COST), the latter being a model that predicts the condition of different transit assets based on their age and the level of investment in maintenance. A series of Capital Asset Condition Assessment Reports document the backlog of capital needs due to underinvestment in the transit system. The most recent report from 2014 estimates a capital maintenance backlog of $19.5 billion and 10-year capital need of $16.6 billion for the region.
The efforts of the RTA and others mean that the region has already made progress in implementing asset management. Vehicle maintenance management systems have improved scheduling and can spot trends in component failures. Databases of asset condition ratings are used for financial planning and replacement decisions. The tools already developed and information collected will likely be useful as each agency develops its own TAM plan and performance targets.
How the region performs on the FTA measures
In choosing its four performance measures for asset condition, FTA identified metrics that would be relatively simple to implement and report. Rolling stock assets such as buses and rail cars will be measured by the percent of vehicles by category that have met or exceeded their useful lives. Non-revenue service vehicles such as maintenance equipment will also be measured by the percent of vehicles by category that have met or exceeded their useful lives. For infrastructure, the measure will be the percentage of track segments, signals, and systems with performance restrictions, such as areas of the track where lower speeds are required because of infrastructure condition. For facilities, the performance will be measured by the percent of facilities within an asset class rated "marginal" or "poor" on FTA's Transit Economic Requirements Model.
On some of these measures, the region has already been making progress. For instance, each month the CTA reports the percentage of track on which trains are required to operate at slower than normal speeds. This could be the result of construction, power systems, signals, or other issues. This current "slow zones" measure aligns with the new rule, which requires percentage of track with performance restrictions. Slow zones are currently near the lowest they have been in a decade due to a number of small and large track renewal programs, including 2013 reconstruction of the Dan Ryan branch of the Red Line. Remaining slow zones have a number of root causes. For example, trains reduce speed to protect workers in construction zones. Also, the Forest Park Branch of the Blue Line has several slow zones as a result of aging infrastructure. A major rehabilitation of that line is currently in the planning stages in coordination with the IDOT I-290 study.
The performance of rolling stock in our region is more mixed. CTA, Metra, and Pace have all recently made it a high priority to replace older vehicles. The impact on overall fleet age of recent railcar purchases by both Metra and CTA is noticeable in the data. These improvements should reduce maintenance cost and improve system reliability. After major improvements in bus condition by CTA and Pace in the late-2000s, however, bus age is creeping upward again. The metric for rolling stock is based on an estimate of how many years a vehicle is expected to be in service -- called a useful life benchmark (ULB), which is determined by factors such as historical performance, manufacture recommendations and policy. According to the FTA's default benchmark, a bus is expected to last about 12 years while a rail car is expected to last 25 years. By comparing the actual age of vehicles to the ULB, we can understand how many of the vehicles are due for replacement. But because the ULB is based on the manufacture date, it does not capture life-extending major rehabilitation that operators often do, especially for rail vehicles. The service boards have the opportunity to revise the ULBs based on local conditions.
Beyond this, not all the data needed to report trends in the performance measures are presently available. For example, comparable data for performance restrictions on track used by Metra trains are unavailable, and the current format of facility condition data makes it impossible to show improving or declining conditions over time.
Looking ahead
The Chicago region has one of the largest and oldest transit systems in the country. The age and heavy use of this system makes regular inspection and tracking of asset condition even more critical. Proactive maintenance based on these data can improve safety and reliability. The plans and targets developed as a result of this new FTA rule support GO TO 2040's vision of using performance-driven criteria to make better investment decisions.
In developing the new ON TO 2050 regional plan, CMAP is publishing strategy papers on a series of topics that will include asset management. Working with stakeholders to develop the strategy papers, CMAP is exploring new policy directions to potentially be included in ON TO 2050. Using best practices in asset management can increase investment efficiencies while improving the travel experience. In a constrained transportation funding environment, asset management also offers the opportunity to reduce costs and target investments.
While not directly addressed in the new rule, MPOs such as CMAP are also required by statute (49 USC 5303(h)(2)(B)(ii)) to set performance targets for transit asset condition 180 days after the transit agencies set their targets. Thus, CMAP would need to establish asset condition targets, at the earliest, by the end of June 2017. Over the next few months, CMAP expects to begin coordinating with the transit agencies on how best to approach this requirement, particularly in how to situate this annual target within the context of the long-range comprehensive regional plan. ON TO 2050 will continue GO TO 2040's focus on performance-based programming, and this rule offers a further implementation step in that process.