Several recent Nelson\Nygaard studies have encouraged transit agency boards to face the difficult choices of service planning, and to provide clear policy direction about those choices. This strategy is an antidote to the problem of "management by complaint," and to the breakdown of trust between boards and staff. If staff knows that it is following a clear direction, staff can feel more confident in defending its actions when a complaint arises.
The toughest tradeoff of all, in our experience, is between Productivity goals ("routes with less than X boardings per hour are candidates for elimination") and Coverage goals ("X% of riders shall be within Y distance of service.") Most agencies have policies of these forms. When these policies are not followed, as often happens, the problem may be that the board has not been asked to choose between them.
In low-density areas, routes that provide extensive local coverage are almost never productive. Some, in fact, meet productivity standards only because of school loads that actually occur on only a few trips a day. This should not surprise us, since density is the basic measure of how many potential riders are along the route.
Recent Nelson\Nygaard work for several California and Oregon agencies has aimed at clarifying this tradeoff. Nelson\Nygaard has worked with staff to develop new ways of stating board intentions. For example, boards might choose to divide their resources by intention, giving a direction such as: "80% of our resources shall be allocated for productivity, with the remainder allocated on the basis of need regardless of productivity." In developing these policies, Nelson\ Nygaard also presents sketch plans illustrating what each policy would mean for the system. Ultimately, many policymakers appreciate the chance to think about this problem in the abstract, and making the decision once, instead of struggling with the same problem separately in the course of each service planning debate.