The Capacity to Endure
In a moment when public transit is on life support—ridership declining, modernization projects hemorrhaging money, and almost every private sector transit tech company has been gutted by private equity—agencies find themselves in a perfect storm. Sure, the buses are getting greener, but that’s little comfort when an expensive step toward sustainability may erode service quality. The public deserves reliable, user-friendly, and accessible service—but what once seemed permanent about public transit keeps shifting as post-pandemic riders have evolving expectations.
But here’s the twist: instead of outsourcing their future to expensive consultants or tech firms chasing profit, transit agencies are turning to an unexpected source—their own people. In-house technologists and subject-matter experts are finally getting their opportunity, and they’re not just tinkering around the edges. They’re rebuilding from the ground up, making it clear that the future of transit tech won’t be constrained by market factors oblivious to the concerns of riders but driven by the very teams who’ve been quietly keeping digital systems alive all along.
Today, transit agencies are expanding their in-house digital teams to improve the operational tools used by staff, the quality of information available to the public, service quality, and the accessibility of public transit.
Transit agencies are each unique, and so are their digital divisions, which vary in size, structure, and placement within the agency—some might be embedded in IT, marketing, or customer experience departments. Each configuration has advantages and challenges, with perhaps CEO proximity having an oversized effect on their ability to deliver on rider-centric goals, but there is more to this story than what can be displayed on an org chart.
From time to time, TransitOPS members are asked how to replicate the successes of the MBTA’s Customer Technology Department, which was later renamed the Technology Innovation Department. However, the questions we receive often miss the point. They tend to focus on technologies, team structures, or delivery strategies—where hiring skilled technologists provides a straightforward solution—rather than addressing the more complex and industry-specific financial and programmatic sustainability issues. The critical question is not about Agile or DevOps per se, but about how these emergent and growing divisions can maintain their effectiveness and relevance over the long term.
This essay outlines the organizational leadership required for achieving long-term in-house transit tech viability. Given that this topic lacks a standardized vocabulary, I will use the following terms:
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Transit Technology Department: The division responsible for delivering software and services to support agency goals, including rider-facing websites and apps, transit data, and
internal operations tools.
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Executive Director: The individual accountable for the department’s financial sustainability and overall impact.
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Program: A distinct segment within the department that defines and measures the thematic outcomes digital teams aim to achieve through research, design, writing, and software
engineering.
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Digital Team: A small cross-functional group that delivers program outputs as digital products through mature product or project development methods.
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The Two Facets of All Strategic Decision-Making
Every decision an executive director makes affects the programmatic and financial sustainability of the transit technology department. Should we increase the size of our GTFS management team? How can we raise awareness of our reduced fares programs? How should I spend my time today? In these moments, executive directors may think these decisions are only about programs or finances, but every decision is about both. Finding the best allocation of time and resources to accomplish the transit agency’s mission is a fundamental question and tension within each transit technology department. When executive directors hold both dimensions in mind, they can make the best, most strategic decisions for their transit technology department, leading to ongoing programmatic and financial stability. Taken together, programmatic impact and financial viability are what make the transit technology department sustainable.
Core Principles
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Financial Sustainability: A critical flaw in both business and strategic planning within in-house transit tech departments is the separation of impact goals from financial goals and strategies. Financial sustainability is not merely an additional objective but a fundamental, intrinsic core goal that must be integrated into the overall strategy.
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Hybrid Revenue Strategies: Successful rider technology departments require a diverse range of funding sources, including operating funds, capital investments, internal partnerships, and grants. Consequently, different financial goals should be established for each type of income stream and managed according to its specific requirements.
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Development of an Explicit Business Model: Every successful organization operates with an underlying business model, even if it hasn’t explicitly defined it. Each program and funding source needs individual management, but this must be framed within a cohesive, integrated business strategy. The executive director’s role is to develop and communicate this overarching strategy, ensuring that all activities—each with its own financial needs—contribute to a viable business model.
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Continuous Decision-Making: Public transit agencies constantly navigate changing conditions that necessitate ongoing decision-making at all strategic levels. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the unpredictability of external environments, while internal shifts, such as the departure of key staff or changes in program relevance, also require timely decisions. Beyond detailed projections, executive directors need a reliable framework to guide consistent decision-making amidst evolving circumstances.
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Aligning to Agency Goals: A transit tech department may appear culturally and ideologically distinct from more traditional departments due to its focus on civic tech and modern technology practices. While this difference can offer advantages, it also carries risks. If not managed carefully, it can lead to disconnecting from or reinterpreting the agency's credible and established strategic goals. For instance, LA Metro, WMATA, and SEPTA have clear and compelling goals. Transit tech departments must align their programs with these goals to be effective and integrated. Working in isolation or counter to the agency’s objectives is a path to irrelevance.
How Can We Ensure the Capacity to Endure?
Setting programmatic goals is a common practice in transit technology management. For example, we might aim to improve the accuracy of real-time arrival predictions by 10% or enhance the clarity of communication during unplanned disruptions. However, determining our financial goals can be less straightforward. While private transit tech companies aim to maximize profitability, should our goal be to operate without a concern toward budgets, to increase our operations budget by $5 million, or to boost partner revenue by 15%? Should we be reducing our budget and finding ways to do more with less?
Classical economics suggests that a government department’s financial goal is to ensure sufficient working capital—having enough funds to sustain operations over the long term. This concept is often referred to as sustainability. However, the term can be interpreted in various ways. Private sector strategic plans might define sustainability as developing a more diversified income base, while transit agencies might use it to describe practices that protect the environment and reduce emissions.
For clarity, we adopt the United Nations’ definition of sustainability: “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” and Wikipedia’s definition: “the capacity to endure.”
There are two crucial dimensions of sustainability for a rider technology department:
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Financial and Programmatic Sustainability: Sustainability involves both financial stability—the ability to meet current needs without jeopardizing future resources—and programmatic sustainability—the capacity to deliver meaningful impacts for transit riders and operations staff while adapting to evolving needs.
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Sustainability as an Ongoing Process: The notion of a “sustainable business model” can mistakenly suggest a static state where, once achieved, the organization simply generates financial resources effortlessly. In reality, what is considered sustainable today may not be tomorrow. Funding sources can change or disappear, program practices may evolve, and rider expectations can shift. There is no permanent solution; instead, the goal is to continuously move in the right direction.
In practice, maintaining financial stability and achieving mission impact requires leaders to consistently consider both objectives—and their deep interconnectedness—in every major decision. For instance, if an agency operates a complex diversion on a busy subway route but lacks the technical capacity or resource prioritization to update its website or the data feeding external trip planning tools, it could lead to significant concerns from riders, advocacy groups, elected officials, and the press. There are simply no significant decisions that do not have simultaneous implications for mission and money.
Effective strategic or business-oriented planning must be regularly updated and based on current assumptions and trends. In a rapidly changing environment, long-term plans may quickly become outdated. As conditions and the agency’s capacity shift, previously held beliefs and objectives may need reevaluation.
To sustain digital transformation in public transit, rider technology departments must develop a funding model that aligns multiple program logic models with the agency’s primary goals. This approach should demonstrate the impact and return on investment of technology efforts in areas such as increased ridership, improved ease of use, streamlined operations, reduced emissions, and fare revenue growth.
Looking Forward
The challenges facing transit agencies are formidable, and it’s clear that old methods have failed. The only rational course of action? Turning to the real experts—the people who understand transit operations and the needs of riders. Agencies are now seeking team members who bring transit subject matter expertise alongside deep civic tech skills in strategic rider research, design, and engineering.
Recent successes have instilled a new determination: the solution lies with those already in the trenches, not with the PowerPoint-wielding consultants who have never set foot on a bus.
Private companies and vendors will still play a role in the future of public transit, but agencies are becoming savvier. They know what they want and expect results from vendors who are true subject matter experts. The era of spending millions on brand-name consultants, whose advice is as insightful as a chatbot’s and who wouldn’t know a ghost bus from a deadhead, is coming to an end.
Okay, What About Small and Mid-Size Agencies?
As some thoughtful reviewers pointed out, this post is directed toward large transit agencies that already have and are expanding their in-house digital teams. But what should smaller agencies do to support their agency’s mission when an adequate budget for an in-house team may be unachievable? In our next post, we’ll dig a bit deeper into the subject matter expertise that large and mid-sized agencies should prioritize for smaller teams and technologies strategies that involve more vendor cooperation without leading to vendor over-reliance.