“It was fascinating to see how similar many of our transit challenges ultimately are.”— Joe Lhota, Chairman and Chief Executive, New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority
About the Summit
In 2012, Regional Plan Association launched an unprecedented forum for leaders of the world's top transit agencies. The Transit Leadership Summit brings together public-transportation chief executives for three annual gatherings to discuss common challenges and share solutions in an intimate, closed-door setting.
With fewer than 25 participants representing a dozen major cities at each summit, executives can participate in a candid, off-the-record dialogue about promising strategies and technologies to improve the transportation experience, as well as confide the obstacles they face. Participation is by invitation only.
New York, April 2012
The first summit brought together executives from New York, São Paulo, London, Hong Kong and eight other world cities. The event took place at the Pocantico Conference Center on John D. Rockefeller’s historic estate. Many of the executives were meeting their global peers for the first time.
The summit was organized around the presentation of case studies of challenges confronted by the individual agencies. Among the topics covered were fare policy, technological innovation, planning and expansion, and labor issues. After a brief description of the challenge by the agency’s chief executive, summit participants engaged in a lively group discussion, sharing advice and experience on how they had grappled with similar questions.
The agenda of the summit also left ample time for informal conversation in small groups. Many of the summit’s most memorable exchanges occurred over dinner, at the evening receptions, or on walks through the conference center’s grounds. These conversations gave participants the chance to get to know each other in a meaningful way, the first step toward establishing a long-term partnership among these transport agencies.
List of participants
Lessons learned
Singapore, March 2013
Five of the first summit’s participating cities returned for the second one, bringing with them valuable comments on how the previous year’s summit had helped shape strategic changes within their agencies. Two new cities of vastly different magnitudes, technologies and policies – Vienna and Seoul – added to the diversity of the group.
The second summit focused on three main topics: improving the customer experience, prioritizing capital projects, and setting fares to be effective and equitable. Research papers were commissioned in advance of the summit.
Generously co-hosted by Singapore's Land Transport Authority, the second summit gave participants the opportunity to visit Singapore, one of the world's most vibrant cities with a booming economy and a very high quality of life. Participants visited the Electronic Road Pricing control center, the Sengkang Bus Interchange where different modes of transportation – buses, light rail and subway – all meet and serve a transit-oriented new town, and the Marina Barrage, which created a reservoir with a catchment area of one-sixth the size of the country in the city center. Conversations among the participants on these trips were as memorable as the sites visited.
Europe, Spring 2014
In 2014, a third summit will take place in Europe.
For more information about Regional Plan Association, please visit www.rpa.org
“It was a very powerful group of executives with a strong diversity of perspectives.”— Rich Sarles, General Manager and CEO, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Participants
The underlying objective of the Transit Leadership Summits is to create and foster an ongoing network of senior executives from the world's most innovative and dynamic transit agencies. The first summit, held in New York in April 2012, included 19 senior executives from 12 transit agencies in nine countries and four continents. The second summit took place in Singapore in March 2013. Ten top executives from seven transit agencies participated.
“The variety of transit agencies attending made the discussions very interesting.”— Morris Cheung, Human Resources Director, Hong Kong MTR
Lessons Learned
Discussions at the 2012 Transit Leadership Summit were stimulating and informative. Key conclusions are summarized below:
- Frequent and reliable service: Transit needs to be competitive with other modes of transit.
- Amenities: Comfortable seats, wi-fi and other amenities mean that customers can work and socialize while traveling. This is a critical advantage for transit compared with other modes of transportation. A comfortable and productive commute is likely more important than a fast commute to attracting customers.
- Better communication with customers: This is particularly important with younger customers, who are committed transit users and sophisticated social-media users. Real-time information is expected for this generation.
- Branding and good design: Customers' perception of transit is critical to its success.
Fares must be set effectively and equitably, but how? Raising fares is always sensitive politically; a structured formula set by an independent governmental body can help to ensure that fares keep up with inflation and increases in labor costs. Fares should be set high enough for the agency to provide quality service and amenities, but also be designed to accommodate those customers for whom transit costs are a significant portion of their income. New fare-collection technologies can help facilitate this segmentation of the market. Transit agencies seeking to adopt a merchant-based fare system should work together with other agencies for a unified fare payment standard to reduce costs with banks.
Transit investments are expensive, and government funding is difficult to obtain. Transit agencies can diversify their funding sources:
- Farebox revenue: The farebox recovery ratios of the agencies participating in the summit varied from 27% (Los Angeles) to 200% (Hong Kong). There are many reasons for these variations, including the use of the system, the density of urban development and operating patterns.
- Partnerships with the private sector: Involving the private sector in the development of new transit systems can help infuse a project with upfront cash, complement the skills of the public agency, and insulate the public sector from politically difficult situations such as fare increases and labor negotiations. The public sector, however, should set the goals of the project and closely monitor its private partners.
- Value capture: Several transit agencies have engaged in successful partnerships with private developers to build dense, mixed-use nodes around train stations and have captured new revenue via those developments. If a transit agency owns the underlying property, it can lease out the land for redevelopment. Even if the agency doesn't own the property, it can work with the local government to structure a property tax system -- using, for example, tax-increment financing -- that generates revenue for the transit system. These dense residential or commercial developments have the added benefit of generating new customers.
- Congestion pricing: London, Stockholm and Singapore - the three cities with congestion pricing - as well as New York City - which has considered it - all were present at the summit. In Stockholm and Singapore, pricing is primarily a congestion-management measure and the revenue doesn't go to transit. But in London, the revenue from pricing congestion is used to subsidize the transit system, which helps to provide a viable alternative to driving. New York City considered a similar cross-subsidy plan.
Public transportation is too often taken for granted. But many of the most significant challenges that cities face today - stagnating economies, congestion, long commutes, carbon emissions - are best addressed by building a strong public-transportation system. Making the environmental and economic case for public transportation is critical to ensuring that the government continues to fund transit at appropriate levels. New metrics for measuring the benefits of transit on greenhouse gas emissions, or on the economic climate, would be uuseful.
A civic organization independent from the government can be the most effective advocate for public transportation. The organization can make the economic and environmental case for transit to the public institutions that fund it, as well as to the public, helping to forestall any potential "not in my backyard" opposition to projects.
“The discussions at the summit were all very stimulating and thought-provoking.”— Elaine Seagriff, Head of London-Wide Policy and Strategy, Transport for London
Research
In preparation for the Transit Leadership Summit, Regional Plan Association produced a set of comparative maps of the participating cities’ transit systems. The maps illustrate the different physical landscapes the transit agencies operate in, as well as the size and composition of their transit infrastructure. The comparative charts provide apples-to-apples comparisons of the agencies on key metrics, including ridership, geographic coverage and fiscal context.
Reports
2012 Summit Summary (PDF)
Research Papers
Fare Collection and Fare Policy (PDF)
Capital Priority-Setting for Transit in Large Metro Areas (PDF)
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Barcelona
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Hong Kong
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London
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Los Angeles
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Mexico City
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Montreal
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New York
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Santiago
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Sao Paulo
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Seoul
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Singapore
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Stockholm
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Vienna
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Washington
All Maps (PDF)
- Residents, central city & metro area (PNG)
- Residents, metro area, 2000, 2010, 2020 (projected) (PNG)
- Car ownership per capita (PNG)
- Metropolitan density and surface area (PNG)
- Annual ridership, by mode, 2000, 2010 (PNG)
- Stations, by mode, 2000, 2010, and under construction (PNG)
- Annual operating costs (PNG)
- Annual capital budget (HR and LR only) (PNG)
- Effective fare vs. GDP per capita (HR and LR only) (PNG)
- Transit ridership (all modes) and density (metro area)(PNG)
- Population vs surface area (PNG)
- Year metro opened (PNG)
- View all charts as a single PDF.
“The Transit Leadership Summit is very valuable to all participants. As an annual gathering, it allows us to meet our peers and build a professional network.”— Lew Yii Der, Group Director of Corporate Planning & Research, Singapore Land Transport Authority
Sponsors
The Transit Leadership Summit is made possible by a generous grant from the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations. Additional support for the 2012 New York summit was provided by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Additional support for the 2013 Singapore summit is provided by Singapore’s Land Transport Authority.
VREF, the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations, is the collective name under which four foundations collaborate to finance research and education in the area Future Urban Transport: How to deal with complexity. VREF finances FUT research for the purpose of contributing to new ideas and solutions within the complex structure that lies behind the design of sustainable transportation systems in cities. The challenge is to find urban transport systems that will provide accessibility for the masses while at the same time radically reducing transportation’s negative local and global environmental impacts. Through the FUT program, VREF currently supports eight centers of excellence in Africa, South and North America, Asia, Australia and Europe, and accompanying events for networking, communication and debate on critical issues for urban transport.
The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group is a network of large and engaged cities from around the world committed to implementing meaningful and sustainable climate-related actions locally that will help address climate change globally. C40 convenes networks of cities to accelerate the identification, development and implementation of projects, programs and policies in C40 cities through city-to-city collaboration. C40 Networks are currently being developed within 7 initiative areas: transportation, energy, waste management, sustainable development, measurement and planning, water drainage and infrastructure, and sustainable finance infrastructure and green growth.
C40 works in an aligned partnership with the Clinton Climate Initiative Cities program, which was started by the William J. Clinton Foundation. CCI Cities became the delivery partner of C40 in 2006. The closer alliance between the two organizations – announced in the spring of 2011 – brings significant resources and infrastructure that will enhance and accelerate their historic activities and positions the combined effort as one of the preeminent climate action organizations in the world.
Founded in 1940, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund advances social change that contributes to a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world. The RBF’s grantmaking is organized around three themes: Democratic Practice, Peacebuilding, and Sustainable Development. Though the Fund pursues its three program interests in a variety of geographic contexts, it has identified several specific locations on which to concentrate cross-programmatic attention. The Fund refers to these as “RBF pivotal places”: subnational areas, nation-states, or cross-border regions that have special importance with regard to the Fund’s substantive concerns and whose future will have disproportionate significance for the future of a surrounding region, an ecosystem, or the world. The Fund currently works in three pivotal places: New York City, Western Balkans, and Southern China.
The Land Transport Authority is a statutory board under Singapore’s Ministry of Transport, that spearheads land transport developments in Singapore. LTA plans the long-term transport needs of Singapore, taking care of those who drive as well as those who take public transport. The ultimate goal - a smooth and seamless journey for all.
Contact
Participation in the summit is by invitation only.
For more information, please contact Juliette Michaelson, Regional Plan Association, jmichaelson@rpa.org or +1 (212) 253-5981.