System Modeled on Compstat To Analyze Railroads and Subways

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is revamping the way the performance of the state's railroads and subways is measured, with a system that helped cut city crime rates in half under Mayor Giuliani's administration.

Governor Spitzer's new pick to head the MTA, Elliot Sander, said he plans to employ the system to improve accountability at the agency.

It will be modeled on Compstat, a management tool that helps police officers better allocate their resources by detecting patterns in crime. Political analysts say Mr. Giuliani will tout the use of systems like Compstat in his run for president in 2008.

"What he's doing is our own little version of Compstat," the chief operating officer of the MTA, Susan Kupferman, said. "Our own mini-Compstat will use performance data in a different way than it's been used here before."

Ms. Kupferman previously analyzed performance for all of New York City when she worked in Mayor Bloomberg's Office of Operations.

Systems based on Compstat are now being used by government agencies in New York, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.

Mr. Sander also is considering combining three bus systems into one organization and combining the operations of the two commuter rail lines, Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad, into one agency, in order to improve performance at the MTA.