The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated existing challenges of declining ridership and financial instability and also presented unprecedented challenges of passenger safety and shifted mobility patterns. With decreased public transit ridership and operating revenues, the transit industry must identify ways to restore trust, increase ridership and revenues, and facilitate the long-term well-being of transportation systems in order to deliver the public service of mobility in coming decades.
The SFMTA was awarded a Federal Transit Administration (FTA) national competitive grant to develop a National Transit Adaptation Strategy. The Agency, with its partners at Institute for the Future (IFTF), The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Clear Channel Outdoor, and MIG, is developing a set of data-based tools and marketing material that any U.S. transit agency may implement to rebuild post-pandemic confidence in public transit and improve ridership.
The National Transit Adaptation Strategy project is divided into four Phases:
- Phase I: a futures report that identifies possible futures in order to help transit agencies set a path toward the most probable future scenario.
- Phase II: a ridership persona report which identifies four public transit user personas that provide the industry with key market segments to manage their systems and support operational efficiency.
- Phase III: a marketing campaign and messaging package which transit agencies can replicate and use to target specific rider personas given anticipated future scenarios to increase system ridership.
- Phase IV: a ridership data model which transit agencies can use to model potential ridership scenarios based on various intervention strategies.
Phase I: Future Reports
Phase I includes four final reports: a Future Forces Report which identifies the most probable principle drivers of change in the near and far future, a Future Scenario Report which uses the forces identified in the Future Forces Report to develop five potential scenarios for public transit agencies, an interactive Map of the Future which transit agencies can use to explore possible futures and subsequent courses of action, and a final summary report submitted and published by the Federal Transit Administration.
The Future Forces Report
The Future Forces Report combines industry research, expert interviews, and stakeholder interviews, to identify the social, technological, economic, environmental, and political forces that are quickly shaping the future. Transit agencies can use the insights in this report to better understand the forces that will shape public transportation in the next decade to make future-focused decisions today. The content is designed to provoke insights about how transit agencies might change to better prepare for unpredictable futures and to provide a framework for meaningful discussions about possible futures.
The Future Scenario Report
The Future Scenarios Report builds on the Future Forces report by presenting five distinct and plausible scenarios that may unfold for transit agencies over the next 10 years. The future of transportation and public transit systems will likely contain elements and trends from each of these five scenarios. The report aims to provoke report readers’ imaginations and support their evaluations of growth, constraint, collapse, and transformation future scenarios.
The Map of the Future
The Map of the Future is an interactive toolkit that brings together the Future Forces and Future Scenarios. By considering a wide range of future possibilities—each with its own pathway toward transformation, set of implications, and trade-offs—transit agencies can prepare to face the future. Report readers can tailor details of the future forces, impact zones, or scenarios to the unique characteristics of their agency, city, and public transit system, and use this toolkit as a starting point for exploring future possibilities in your own location.
Phase I Final FTA Report
The NTAS Phase I FTA Final Report summarizes the research, scenarios, findings, and conclusions from the Future Forces Report, the Future Scenarios Report, and the Map of the Future.
As of June 2024, the NTAS Phase I FTA Final Report is completed and being processed by the FTA and will be posted to this website upon publication.