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1 U.S. public transportation agencies face an enormous set of challenges as they seek to preserve their existing capital assets. These agencies have a wide variety of assets to maintain and in many cases, these assets have aged to a point at or beyond the recommended interval for rehabilitation or replacement. Lacking adequate funds, these operators expect they will suffer significant reductions in system reliability, which may eventually result in restricted transit service. Asset preservation is an important concern not only for older, well-established transit operators, but also for newer and smaller transit systems. Transit agencies require improved tools to make the case for needed investments in their assets and to communicate the impacts of investing at a given level. This report describes the results of a Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) project related to achieving a state of good repair for transit assets, focused specifically on approaches for evaluating and prioritizing rehabilitation and replacement investments in existing capital assets. The effort involved reviewing existing state-of-good-repair practices in transit and other related industries. Based on the review, an evaluation was performed of the impacts and implications of different investment levels for rehabilitation and replacement of transit assets. The evaluation summarizes the positive and negative impacts of rehabilitation and replacement investment decisions, and describes the performance measures used to quantify those impacts. An important element of the research was the development of a framework for transit agencies to use for prioritization of capital asset rehabilitation and replacement decisions. The framework builds upon a set of fundamental concepts and provides a basic set of steps for transit agencies to follow when evaluating and prioritizing rehabilitation and replacement investments. An analytical approach and set of spreadsheet tools were developed to support the framework. These address how to evaluate rehabilitation and replacement actions for specific types of transit assets, and how to prioritize candidate rehabilitation and replace- ment actions. A detailed example is provided that demonstrates application of the analytical approach and tools in support of the framework. Practitioners, researchers, and transit agencies can use the results of the research to better prioritize their investments in existing capital assets, and better communicate the predicted impacts of a given set of rehabilitation and replacement investments. The results of the research are intended to be of immediate value for transit agencies. In addition, several areas have been identified through this effort where additional research may be merited to support further improvements in assessing and addressing state-of-good- repair concerns. These areas include the following: ⢠Implementation guidance for the framework, analytical approach, and tools developed through this research effort; s u m m a r y
2⢠Standards for asset data and condition assessment; ⢠Synthesis of models and approaches for track and track-related assets used in passenger and freight rail in the United States and abroad; ⢠Research on the relationship between asset condition and user impacts, such as delay; ⢠Improved high-level models for relating investment levels to performance; ⢠Quantification of transit agency prioritization strategies; and ⢠Guidance on applying asset management concepts to transit. Further work in these areas would benefit transit agencies throughout the United States and abroad, extending the current research effort and providing transit agencies with additional advancements in the analysis of asset rehabilitation and replacement investments.
