CHRISTIE ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES PUTTING NJ COMMUTERS FIRST WITH NEW "SCORECARD"
NJ TRANSITâ¿¿s new performance â¿¿Scorecardâ¿¿ available on njtransit.com to increase agency accountability and transparency
July 13, 2011
NJT-11-039
NEWARK, NJ — At today’s regularly scheduled meeting of the NJ TRANSIT Board of Directors, Transportation Commissioner and NJ TRANSIT Board Chairman James Simpson continued the Christie Administration’s commitment to accountability and transparency, unveiling the agency’s first ever “Scorecard.” The new Scorecard provides an additional management and reporting tool that makes key statistics and performance data readily accessible to the public for the first time. The new site is among others currently being used by the Administration to ensure New Jersey residents have full access to state government.
“NJ TRANSIT’s Scorecard is a reflection of Governor Christie’s commitment to increased transparency in the state government and its agencies,” said Commissioner Simpson. “The Scorecard will serve as a springboard for building new confidence and credibility for NJ TRANSIT as the State’s public transportation system.”
“The goal of the Scorecard is to give us the ability to make meaningful management decisions on a daily basis and focus on what is most important, giving us a tie-in to the customer experience,” said NJ TRANSIT Executive Director James Weinstein. “As a public transportation agency, effective management comes from measuring ourselves in critical areas so that we can best serve our customers, who in turn provide the ultimate measure of our performance.”
Earlier this year, NJ TRANSIT announced the Scorecard initiative, which is intended to set corporate-wide standards of accountability and create transparency for the public.
To support this initiative, NJ TRANSIT developed a system of metrics to provide a baseline for measuring the agency’s performance in the areas of customer experience, safety and security, financial performance, corporate accountability and employee excellence. The baseline also incorporates information gathered from customer surveys, which will be conducted quarterly, marking the first time in NJ TRANSIT’s history that the agency will be conducting systemwide customer satisfaction surveys on a regular, ongoing basis.
Yesterday, NJ TRANSIT revealed the results of the first customer satisfaction survey, which asked customers to rate NJ TRANSIT on a scale of 0 (unacceptable) to 10 (excellent) on 32 attributes of the system. Detailed survey results are available at njtransit.com.
Starting today, NJ TRANSIT’s first overall Scorecard is also available on a special section of njtransit.com to provide the public with a clear measurement of how the corporation is performing.
The Scorecard measures NJ TRANSIT’s performance in five strategic areas of focus. Each area incorporates a set of metrics as follows:
- Customer Experience: Customer satisfaction ratings for NJ TRANSIT services and other measures such as the average time it takes to process a customer inquiry and on-time performance for the system’s bus, rail, light rail and Access Link service.
- Safety and Security: Data provided by Operations and the NJ TRANSIT Police Department quantifying the safety and security of customers and our system.
- Financial Performance: Data on budget adherence, farebox recovery, operating subsidy per customer and pension funding.
- Corporate Accountability: Revenue per hour, ridership, fare stability and Disadvantaged and Small Business Enterprise goals.
- Employee Excellence: Service quality goal, women and minority utilization rates and employee volunteer rate.
For the current Fiscal Year, NJ TRANSIT has set performance goals for each metric that are intended to drive the agency’s overall performance in an upward direction. These goals have been published along with the actual “scores,” so that customers and members of the public can track NJ TRANSIT’s progress.
The Scorecard initiative is intended to help NJ TRANSIT make strategic decisions to maximize its resources as well as illustrate how the agency is managing its commitment to excellence. In addition, the Scorecard will show the agency’s strengths and weaknesses, providing clear insight into where NJ TRANSIT needs to improve in order to provide a greater return to customers and taxpayers.
Scorecard results will be reported and updated quarterly on njtransit.com.
About NJ TRANSIT
NJ TRANSIT is the nation's largest statewide public transportation system providing more than 895,000 weekday trips on 240 bus routes, three light rail lines and 12 commuter rail lines. It is the third largest transit system in the country with 165 rail stations, 60 light rail stations and more than 18,000 bus stops linking major points in New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia.