Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

The Contribution Of Manager And Organizational Characteristics To Transit Agency Performance: A National Study Of United States Transit Providers, Charles White, Sheldon Edner

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

The primary objective of the report is to relate attitudinal and demographic characteristics of transit management personnel and agency institutional characteristics to agency performance. The purpose of this analysis is to determine the relative contributions of manager and institutional characteristics as explanatory factors in transit agency performance. The study is based upon the responses of 1033 managers from 134 agencies representing the full range of agency size, institutional, and locational characteristics.

Across six basic performance measures (coat efficiency, labor efficiency, service effectiveness, maintenance efficiency (measured in two different ways) and vehicle efficiency) used here, manager characteristics and attitudes do not …

Manager Retention And Job Change In The Transit Industry: A Survey Of Manager Attitudes, Charles White, Sheldon Edner

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This paper examines issues related to the managerial personnel needs of the transit industry over the next five years. Specifically, we explore the career expectations reported by 1301 managers from 178 agencies. Their responses are grouped based on whether they will be with the same transit agency, a different agency, retire, or leave the transit industry. These stated intentions are examined in relation to agency characteristics, individual demographics, professional experience, and evaluations of personal career development and opportunities.

our survey results portray a significantly different transit manager than that described by Mundy and Spchalski in 1973. Current managers are younger, …

Understanding The Dynamics Of Innovation In Urban Transit, Sy Adler

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Urban transit is the major United States example of a private industry that failed and was taken over by the public sector. The recent re-emergence of the private sector in urban transit, and private sector-like behavior in the public sector, raise a number of interesting theoretical and historical issues and policy questions. This report develops a conceptual model to explain this recent history and outlines likely paths of transit service and institutional innovation. The model has three components: 1) the political and economic roles of urban transport facilities in the land development process; 2) the nature of the political process …

Transit Agency Characteristics: An Industry Profile, Charles R. White, Sheldon Edner, Kathi Arlene Ketcheson

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This study reports on a survey sent to 493 transit agencies in 1983. The survey instrument requested information concerning agency institutional type, operating characteristics, service area population, employment, management pool, finances and recruitment problems for the period 1979-1983. Surveys were returned by 207 agencies, 171 of which were accompanied by organization charts. The purpose of the survey was to solicit institutional information concerning agency structure to serve as background information for a subsequent study of respondent agency managers.

The study results describe a managerial context that si extremely diverse across agency characteristics, change in attributes and organizational patterns. Only the …

A Process For Developing Transit Agency Comprehensive Training Plans, Daniel O'Toole, James Marshall

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This report addresses a project whose goals were to create, use, and disseminate information on a process for developing transit agency comprehensive training plans (i.e., plans that contain the training needs for all positions in an organization). The report considers the following:

• The importance of agency training plans and the need for an appropriate process to produce one.

• Information on the project that was undertaken to design and use an appropriate transit agency training plan process.

• The design, components of, and rationale for the training plan process selected for this project.

• Application of the selected training …