Comparative study of two techniques of transit performance assessment: AHP and GAT

Public transit agencies in the United States have been under mounting pressure to reduce operating costs and subsidies and to improve productivity, ridership, and service levels. Given the growing emphasis on quality and efficiency, there is an impending need to develop a formal procedure to assess transit performance. Considerable disagreement exists among experts about the most effective way to measure transit performance and the degree to which performance may be used as a basis for funding allocation. The purpose of the project that serves as the basis of this paper was to develop a performance assessment tool for Michigan transit agencies that receive operating assistance from the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). In this paper, the writers present the application of two techniques: the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Goal Achievement Technique (GAT) for evaluation of one of the five peer groups specially created for the project. The paper concludes that both AHP and GAT are viable tools for conducting transit performance assessment. Both of them are capable of using a wide range of performance data and developing 4 composite performance index for each transit agency. The writers, however, recommend AHP as a better multicriteria assessment tool because of its stronger mathematical foundation, its ability to gauge consistency of judgments, and its flexibility in the choice of ranges at the subcriteria level.