For SANDAG, monitoring our progress is not just a good idea—it’s a legal requirement. We hold ourselves accountable for tracking our progress so that goals for the region are met.
Regional Plan Performance Monitoring
The Regional Plan is updated every four years but covers multiple decades. As a result of the long planning horizon and update frequency, the implementation of each Regional Plan has two distinct phases: near-term actions and continuing actions. Near-term actions are intended to be significantly advanced or completed before the adoption of the next Regional Plan. Continuing actions support the longer-term implementation of projects and programs. A summary on the progress of these actions is included in each Regional Plan in addition to a listing of new actions.
State of the Commute
The SANDAG Overall Work Program includes several performance reporting tasks that focus on monitoring, tracking, and collecting regional transportation data. These efforts include the analysis of transportation data to understand how the region’s transportation system is operating through the development of State of the Commute reports.
The 2024 State of the Commute report provides information on freeway, transit, local roadways, bicycle facilities, infrastructure conditions, and performance data collected on an annual basis.
The development of the State of Commute reports represents an ongoing effort to document the performance and operation of the transportation system. The information provided in these reports is consistent with transportation performance indicators documented in the Regional Comprehensive Plan Performance Monitoring Report and in the Regional Plan.
SANDAG worked with Caltrans, MTS, and NCTD to define the performance indicators for developing this report.
Transit Passenger Counting Program Reporting
SANDAG provides transit system monitoring through its Passenger Counting Program (PCP). Ridership, route, and stop data is collected either by Automatic Passenger Counter devices installed on most transit vehicles in the region or by staff members who enter data into tablet computers.
This data is used by SANDAG, the Metropolitan Transit System (MTS), and North County Transit District (NCTD) for planning, marketing, modeling, and other decision-making purposes.
The two main purposes of the PCP are to generate data needed to satisfy National Transit Database reporting requirements and to provide a detailed look at stop, trip, route, and operator level ridership. This data can be used to measure the performance and productivity of existing service.
