Transform Transit

We are in a moment of urgency and public transit is critical to our collective future. However, increasing investment will not be enough; transit agencies themselves need to be transformed to address these historic challenges.

Public policy conversations usually focus on ‘what’ needs to change, not ‘how’ to make those changes. This game is designed to highlight the challenges with how to make change, so that we can transform public agencies from the inside out.

How to Play

Players advance transit projects around the board while helping each other and dealing with event cards. The goal is to complete projects as a team, and keep your morale up so you can get more done. The main resource constraints in this game are player capacity and bureaucratic bottlenecks.

To start, players pick the project(s) they want to manage from the project cards. How many moves a player gets in a turn is determined by their morale level; players keep track of their moves on their individual board. Each round, everyone picks an event card and deals with the ramifications. With the moves they have left, they can move their project, assist another player, or deal with events in their backlog. When a project makes it through the three administrative hurdles and is completed, the player rolls a die to determine the outcome.

Origin Story

The idea for this game started as an educational tool on how transit agencies actually work. It became an emotional outlet as I (and others) made cards about the things that happened to us. And later I built in layers that allow repeat players to use strategic planning in their play to increase agency capacity.

Transform Transit is frustrating and funny. And working together, with some strategy and luck, you can make change. The goal is to start conversations on what it will take to change how government agencies operate.