Norman, the third-largest city in Oklahoma, is home to the University of Oklahoma, which long managed local transit operations until handing those responsibilities to the city in 2019. That shift required the city to relearn, as it is now responsible for public transit serving 300,000 riders annually. To address this, the city began developing a long-term plan to review existing bus routes and improve transit—but had only outdated information on hand. Norman realized it needed to ask residents what they truly needed, and adopted a simple civic engagement tool: a public survey.

"This survey is informing nearly every transit decision in Norman," said Taylor Johnson, the city's transit coordinator. Norman is just one of many cities and agencies across the U.S. using surveys to gather public opinion on transit.

Ashley Amaya, a senior survey methodologist at the Pew Research Center, noted that surveys are an effective tool for guiding policy change. Survey feedback can be collected relatively quickly, while repeated surveys can track long-term changes and trends. "When governments survey the public, they can also learn how often facilities are used, or the potential impact if changes are made," Amaya said. "This helps allocate funding to areas of a program that need more support."

However, to achieve their goals, government agencies must design the most effective questions and choose the best distribution methods. In Norman, the city, with assistance from the consulting firm Nelson\Nygaard, determined the questions for the "Go Norman Transit Study." This transit consulting firm developed a questionnaire covering everything from bus shelters to routes, which the city then reviewed.

The survey launched last month, ran for about three weeks, and ended on November 30, receiving 638 responses. Norman promoted it through social media, posted flyers inside buses, and contacted stakeholder email lists, encouraging them to participate and share the survey. The city will combine the survey results, census data, and community meeting input to guide transit decisions for the next twenty years, as Norman's population continues to grow. "Since routes haven't changed much in the past 20 years, all recommendations the plan might propose are on the table," Johnson said.

Johnson said the most immediate changes could come from low-cost recommendations, such as adjusting routes, eliminating underused stops, and adding necessary ones. These will be combined with medium- and long-term plans. In February, the city will hold community meetings to gather feedback on proposed transit recommendations.

"Getting future riders where they want to go"

Norman is not the only city seeking public input as it enters a new phase of transit. In Idaho Falls, a city of about 60,000 people, the only public transit service ceased operations in May 2019 due to financial issues. Since then, transit companies and partners have filled the gap with paratransit and services for seniors. Now, Idaho Falls is restarting bus service under the name "Greater Idaho Falls Transit" (GIFT) and needs to re-understand the community's transit needs, said Michelle Ziel-Dingman, president of the Idaho Falls City Council and chair of the GIFT board.

The transit agency is designing a survey to guide the deployment of its planned fixed-route and paratransit services. The survey is expected to launch in late December and run through mid-January. "Right now, we want to get a full picture: if you ride GIFT, where would you go? To work, shopping, or medical appointments?" Ziel-Dingman said. "Our city is growing and changing, with new businesses and big-box retailers moving in. We want to make sure future riders can get where they want to go."

The survey will ask where people would ride transit to, as well as demographic information such as gender, age, and employment status. The transit agency also needs to know whether students and staff at Eastern Idaho College and University Place need bus routes, and whether seniors need additional transit services.

"Our city is growing and changing, with new businesses and big-box retailers moving in. We want to make sure future riders can get where they want to go."

— Michelle Ziel-Dingman, president of the Idaho Falls City Council and chair of the GIFT board

Ziel-Dingman said the information collected from the survey could also be used to attract advertisers. For example, if a large number of users want to go to a particular business, GIFT could approach that business about advertising partnerships. GIFT used previous transit surveys from the local Bonneville Metropolitan Planning Organization as a starting point and enlisted a Brigham Young University-Idaho student with survey experience to help design it. The survey will be distributed online with help from the Idaho Falls communications department, businesses, hospitals, and local colleges. Ziel-Dingman acknowledged that online outreach could pose a barrier for those without internet access, but she believes free internet at libraries will help bridge that gap.

Assessing COVID-19's impact on transit

Even transit agencies that have long analyzed rider habits are now in uncharted territory due to COVID-19. Before the pandemic, the Chicago Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) was conducting a survey of non-riders—those who had stopped riding or never used transit. However, the pandemic turned nearly everyone into lost riders, completely changing the survey's direction, said Hersch Singer, RTA's lead analyst. "What we knew about people's transit preferences before the pandemic, I think is no longer applicable now because everything has changed," Singer said. "Anyone in the transit industry believes those preferences won't hold."

So the RTA, which oversees planning for three transit operators in northeastern Illinois and their 2 million riders, shifted the survey's core goal to understanding the pandemic's impact on ridership. With consulting from Resource Systems Group, the RTA redesigned a national study on COVID-19 and transit. It retained questions about people's travel activities and added questions to help identify new behavioral baselines: Are they commuting? Are they going to the grocery store more or using delivery services?

The survey even includes two questions about detailed operational funding allocation, asking respondents to distribute a hypothetical $10 across nine transit priority areas. Singer said this section, though requiring extra effort, lets the transit agency understand what riders consider the most important priorities. "It's strange that we've suddenly been thrown into the unknown," Singer said of the pandemic. "Planners pride themselves on understanding markets and preferences, but now we have no clue."

The 18-day survey ended on November 30, receiving more than 2,600 responses. The RTA contacted the agencies' customer lists and users of the Ventra fare app via email, aiming to reach riders of all three agencies as well as current users, such as essential workers and those without cars. A second round of the survey will take place in mid-January. Combined analysis of both rounds will allow the RTA to observe whether opinions change over that 1.5-month period and more clearly identify what people expect from transit.

Best practices

Unless effectively implemented, public surveys are not a sustainable form of civic engagement. Amaya of the Pew Research Center said transparency is key to ensuring people feel surveys are valuable. One indicator of transparency is when the organizing body publishes online how the survey was conducted, including sampling methods, question wording, weighting, and analysis methods.

Amaya noted that the ideal sampling method is probability-based, where the organization randomly selects from a variety of samples, such as dialing random phone numbers or mailing to random addresses from U.S. Postal Service lists, which is also a common sampling method for online surveys. Organizations can mail invitations with unique links, ensuring each person can only fill it out once. Another common method is using a panel. Organizations randomly recruit people by phone or mail to form a group that can be surveyed multiple times. These processes are typically conducted online, which is faster and cheaper because there's no need to constantly update survey subjects, Amaya said.

Amaya emphasized that surveys should try to avoid non-probability samples, because those who volunteer to participate often differ from the general population. Steven Higashide, research director at TransitCenter, recommends talking with riders through focus groups or community events before writing a survey. These in-depth discussions can highlight important issues for agencies to include in the survey. He also advises special consideration of how to reach target audiences. Online surveys may skew toward higher-income riders, so agencies could pay community organizations to distribute surveys to diverse groups, Higashide said.

He cited Metro Transit in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, which partnered with 13 community organizations to promote a recent project building new bus shelters. These organizations went door-to-door, set up tables at community events, and surveyed riders at bus stops, making the survey responses representative in terms of race, ethnicity, income, and disability status. "These groups are often harder to reach through online-only surveys," Higashide said. "In many projects, public engagement is under-resourced, so project feedback may only come from a few city hall meetings that are inconvenient in time and place for many riders. This makes projects politically more difficult and skews the feedback agencies receive."

Beyond continuously collecting rider feedback, agencies should also not overlook the needs of other transit stakeholders. For example, Higashide mentioned that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority in Boston regularly surveys employers to understand how transit needs change as the pandemic evolves. While surveys should be just one of many tools agencies use to gather feedback, they remain an important way to hear from a broad range of riders who might not typically offer planning feedback. "Whether it's changing service, adjusting fare structures, or planning new projects, transit decisions should be guided by rider information," Higashide said. "The people planning transit aren't always in the same room as riders. Transit is influenced by elected officials, business groups, developers, and others, and those interests don't always align with riders."