Supplemental Material For GAO-20-686: Transit Asset Management: Survey of TAM Program Participants

Fast Facts

This is a supplement to our report TRANSIT ASSET MANAGEMENT: FTA Should Clarify Performance Data and Develop a Plan to Guide Future Program Improvements, GAO-20-686.

We surveyed urban transit agencies and group Transit Asset Management plan sponsors (which are generally direct recipients of federal transit funding), about the Federal Transit Administration's Transit Asset Management program. We have collected the survey results in this supplement.

The results suggest that most agencies had either few changes or small improvements to their transit asset management procedures because of the program's requirements.

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Highlights

This product is a supplement to GAO’s report entitled “Transit Asset Management: FTA Should Clarify Performance Data and Develop a Plan to Guide Future Program Improvements” (GAO-20-686). The purpose of this electronic supplement is to provide the results of two web-based surveys we conducted of transit agency officials and group plan sponsors regarding their views on the implementation of the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Transit Asset Management (TAM) program. GAO surveyed both urban transit agency officials (with a 79 percent response rate) and group TAM plan sponsors (85 percent response rate) about program requirements and improvements or challenges that resulted from the program. We asked urban transit agencies about their process for inventorying and assessing the condition of their assets, including factors they used, the usefulness of FTA’s asset performance measures and targets as well as any improvements or challenges in developing their prioritized list of projects, among other things. For the survey of group TAM plan sponsors, we asked about their role coordinating with participants to develop a prioritized list of projects and use decision support tools as well as coordinating condition assessments and inventories of different transit assets, among other things.

For more information, contact Andrew Von Ah at (202) 512-2834 or Vonaha@gao.gov.

Supplemental Material

Background

This electronic supplement serves as a companion to GAO-20-686 Transit Asset Management: FTA Should Clarify Performance Data and Develop a Plan to Guide Future Program Improvements. It presents the results of web-based surveys we conducted of both urban transit agencies and group Transit Asset Management plan sponsors regarding their perspectives on the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) National Transit Asset Management system (TAM program). We primarily used fiscal year 2017 reporting data from FTA’s National Transit Database to identify and select respondents for both surveys (see the surveys linked below for more on the methods we used).

A copy of the web surveys are linked below with questions and results on the resulting page. These survey results are presented in aggregate form as well as by subpopulation where applicable. We did not include respondent narrative results that were provided to open-ended questions for either survey, as some of these narratives could reveal the respondent’s identity. We administered the surveys from October 2019 to January 2020.

We conducted the work upon which this supplement is based in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

A more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology is contained in our report GAO-20-686 (Washington, D.C.: September 2020).

Survey of Sponsors of Group Transit Asset Management (TAM) Plans

Survey of Transit Providers Regarding Transit Asset Management (TAM) Plan Requirements

Copyright

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Andrew Von Ah

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Physical Infrastructure

VonAha@gao.gov

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Topics

Transportation

Asset managementBest practicesFederal assistance programPerformance measurementInventoryLife cycle costsProgram managementRail transitCopyrightAudit objectives