The assessment of transport systems has traditionally focused on congestion and ridership as its core performance measures. These perspectives fail to account for the actual service people seek from the transport system—the ability to reach destinations. Recent studies have shifted to focus on accessibility as a performance indicator, but do not address the question whether the observed accessibility is sufficient for meeting people’s daily needs. This paper contributes to the accessibility literature by (1) applying a people-centered approach to the performance assessment of transit systems and (2) exploring the factors explaining the differences in performance between regions. The paper proposes the Accessibility Sufficiency Index (ASI) as a performance standard. The ASI is based on a sufficiency threshold representing an accessibility level that is assumed to enable adequate access to destinations. The paper uses neighborhood transit job accessibility data to calculate separate ASI scores for different sufficiency thresholds for 49 large US metropolitan areas. Regression analyses show that transit system performance is shaped most strongly by transit vehicle revenue miles, mixed land uses, and activity centering. Importantly, the size of these effects varies by the employed sufficiency threshold, suggesting that transportation and land use factors affect transit performance at different spatial scales. The results have implications for the ways we evaluate transport and transit systems and for our understanding of the factors that affect their performance.

交通系统的评估传统上将拥堵和客流量作为其核心绩效指标。这些观点未能说明人们从交通系统寻求的实际服务——到达目的地的能力。最近的研究已经转向关注可访问性作为绩效指标，但没有解决观察到的可访问性是否足以满足人们日常需求的问题。本文通过 (1) 将以人为本的方法应用于交通系统的性能评估，以及 (2) 探索解释区域间性能差异的因素，为可达性文献做出贡献。该论文提出了可访问性充足指数（ASI）作为性能标准。ASI 基于代表可访问性级别的充分性阈值，假设该级别能够充分访问目的地。该论文使用邻里交通工作可达性数据来计算美国 49 个大都市区不同充足阈值的单独 ASI 分数。回归分析表明，公交系统性能受公交车辆收入里程、混合土地使用和活动中心的影响最大。重要的是，这些影响的大小因就业充足阈值而异，这表明交通和土地利用因素会影响不同空间尺度的交通绩效。结果对我们评估运输和运输系统的方式以及我们对影响其性能的因素的理解具有重要意义。