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U.S. Department of Transportation U.S. Department of Transportation Icon United States Department of Transportation United States Department of Transportation

TERM Lite and Federal

What is TERM Lite?

TERM Lite is an analysis tool designed to help transit agencies assess their:

  • State of Good Repair (SGR) backlog (total dollar value and by asset type)
  • Level of annual investment to attain SGR or other investment objective
  • Impact of variations in funding on future asset conditions and reinvestment needs
  • Investment priorities - by mode and asset type

Download the TERM Lite package:

How Can TERM Lite Help Me?

Function: SGR Monitoring

  • Question Addressed: Where are we today?
  • Term Output:
    • Current SGR backlog
    • Asset conditions

Function: SGR Management (“What if” Analysis)

  • Question Addressed: Where can we be tomorrow?
  • Term Output:
    • Is backlog increasing or decreasing?
    • What level of investment is required to attain SGR in 10 years? …in 20 years?

Function: Long-Term Capital Plan Support

  • Question Addressed: How should we prioritize limited investment dollars?
  • Term Output:
    • Multi-criteria prioritization rankings
    • Long term SGR plan

What do I Need to Run TERM Lite?

Your agency will require:

  • An inventory of your capital assets (you can download an Excel based "Inventory Publisher" to transfer inventory data to TERM Lite).
  • MS Access 2007 or higher.

For helpful hints on running TERM Lite, please refer to the Quick Start User's Guide.

Release Notes

  • Preliminary Release: You can download the preliminary release version of TERM Lite and provide contact information for future releases. It is anticipated that FTA will provide subsequent releases over time as additional modifications and improvements are made to this tool.
  • Future Releases: The download process includes a request for contact information so that FTA can notify you of future releases of TERM Lite as well as training sessions that are scheduled to be conducted throughout the United States.

TERM Lite v2.0 Release Notes

  • ADDED the ability to include future ("expansion") assets in the analysis
  • ADDED a second analysis mode that determines the amount of annual funding needed to reach and maintain a specific backlog level by desired year
  • ADDED several optional fields to the asset inventory to allow for more detailed post-analysis review
  • ADDED an option to run the analysis for either 20 or 30 years
  • ADDED additional overriding priority settings for specific assets
  • FIXED various bugs

User Feedback

FTA is interested in obtaining user feedback on problems and suggested improvements for TERM Lite. We are also interested in working actively with a limited number of transit operators and regional funding agencies to identify, prioritize and develop improvements to TERM Lite. FTA can provide limited support to help you trouble shoot problems with TERM Lite or to respond to your questions. Furthermore, FTA can provide support to assist you migrate data between versions of TERM Lite.

FTA does not endorse the use of any particular software.

Last updated: Wednesday, April 19, 2023