Review of the Federal Transit Administration’s Transit Economic Requirements Model

TRB's Review of the Federal Transit Administration’s Transit Economic Requirements Model (TERM) examines whether TERM provides reasonable and appropriate estimates of condition and investment needs for its intended purposes. The report also examines TERM’s reliance on a backlog of capital investments as an appropriate basis for developing future capital funding requirements.

The U.S. Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA's) TERM is a tool for estimating the nation’s transit capital expenditure needs over a 20-year period. TERM’s primary use is in the preparation of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s biennial reports to Congress on the conditions and performance of U.S. highways, bridges, and public transit systems.

The report recommends that FTA develop methods to estimate the effect that attaining national goals for transit asset physical condition would have on transit performance and to estimate how improved asset management practices would affect capital expenditure needs.

Three resource papers, commissioned by TRB on behalf of the committee and that were drawn on in preparing the report, are available through the following links:
• the relationship between asset condition and system performance (Cohen 2012),
• a comparison of TERM’s capital needs estimates with estimates developed by three large transit agencies (Zarembski 2012), and
• a proposal for a longer-term revision of the model (Pozdena 2012).