Request for Information: Family Friendly Transit

SimplifyTransit, a transit-centric Software as a Service company, supports the FTA's initiative to develop industry standards for measuring customer experience. They recommend building on existing data standards (like GTFS and TIDES), providing funding for research to avoid unfunded mandates, and ensuring survey methodologies are ADA accessible and multilingual.

The commenter, a transit customer experience expert, supports the Family Friendly Transit Data Initiative and provides detailed recommendations for establishing a national standard for transit customer experience surveys. They argue for unified metrics, specific sampling methods, and the inclusion of both rider perception and observational data to create a benchmarking system for transit agencies.

The commenter suggests that the FTA develop a voluntary transit customer experience survey standard based on five service quality components. They argue that a national standard would improve the understanding of customer perceptions, allow for benchmarking across agencies, and better represent the voice of the customer.

A consultant who works with customer experience (CX) departments across the country argues for the implementation of a standardized CX survey in the public transit sector. They believe a standardized approach would provide agencies with better data to understand customer needs and help the U.S. become a leader in transit CX.

The commenter supports the proposed action by suggesting the establishment of nationally defined "core" service quality metrics and standardized customer perception data collection practices. They argue that this would allow for consistent comparison across agencies while still permitting local performance tracking.