Abstract
Performance data are needed in transit performance analysis to help to identify and to prioritize problem areas for management actions. In the United States, the most comprehensive source of transit performance data has been the National Transit Database (NTD). First collected in 1978 for urban transit systems, the NTD has included data on transit organization characteristics, vehicle fleet characteristics, revenues and subsidies, operating and maintenance costs, vehicle fleet reliability and inventory, services consumed and supplied, and safety and security. In 2006, FTA expanded the NTD program to require reporting by rural transit agencies. The NTD data for rural systems for 2007 through 2013 have since been released. Because NTD data are collected and distributed annually, they are stored in separate files of varying formats, making them difficult to access for performance analysis, especially when multiple years of data are needed. This paper describes a web-based system designed to overcome this limitation. The system integrates the rural NTD data from 2007 to 2013 and provides user-friendly tools to facilitate data access and performance analysis.
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