According to a draft solicitation document from the county, “this validation is required to ensure compliance with the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) mandate for APC certification by the end of Fiscal Year 2025.”
Currently, DTPW works with Urban Transportation Associates (UTA) as its APC system provider.
“UTA is responsible for APC data collection, statistical validation and generating the final APC certification report for submission to the FTA,” the draft solicitation states. “The contractor will assist DTPW by conducting random sampling of unlinked passenger trips and passenger miles traveled to serve as a baseline for comparison with UTA’s APC data.”
Once all contractor and UTA data collection is complete, the department will evaluate if the automated counts fall within an acceptable margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent per FTA and National Transit Database standards.
Specific data collection requirements include:
- The number of passengers who board at each stop
- The number of passengers who alight at each stop
- The distance between any pair of consecutive stops at which boardings or alightings occur
- The number of passengers on board the vehicle between any pair of consecutive stops
- The number of passengers who continue from previous one-way vehicle trips
- The number of passengers who remain in the vehicle at the last stop
