Closing the Loop Improving Transit through Crowd sourced Information

Transcription

1 Closing the Loop Improving Transit through Crowd sourced Information Sean J. Barbeau, Ph.D. Center for Urban Transportation Research University of South Florida Center for Urban Transportation Research University of South Florida Learning Objectives Attendees to this webinar should be able to: List the challenges and opportunities for accommodating issue reporting for transportation infrastructure Explain the advantages of using an issue reporting standard 2 1

2 Challenges Florida has highest bike/pedestrian fatality rate per capita in the nation two straight years Need to identify ways to make multimodal travel safer o Listen to public! Issues that affect travel are cross jurisdictional o Difficult for the public to understand who should manage specific infrastructure (street, light, sidewalk, bike lane, etc.) How can we improve issue reporting from the public to government? Cross-jurisdictional Challenges I want to report a broken bench sand in bike lane broken sidewalk At bus stop? No In city limits? Yes Yes No Contact county Bench color? Green Gray Contact nonprofit Contact transit agency Contact DOT? Contact city Contact local municipality? Which one? 2

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4 What is OneBusAway? What? Suite of open source software that provides real time bus/train/rail tracking information Why? Make riding public transit easier via mobile apps and enabling research that has shown benefits: Shorter perceived wait time [1] Shorter actual wait time [1] Lowers learning curve for new riders [2] Increased ridership [3][7] Increased feeling of safety (e.g., at night) [5][6] Riders prefer accessing real time transit info via mobile apps [1] onebusaway.org [1] Kari Edison Watkins, Brian Ferris, Alan Borning, G. Scott Rutherford, and David Layton (2011), "Where Is My Bus? Impact of mobile real time information on the perceived and actual wait time of transit riders," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Vol. 45 pp. 839 [2] C. Cluett, S. Bregman, and J. Richman (2003). "Customer Preferences for Transit ATIS," Federal Transit Administration. Available at [3] Lei Tang and Piyushimita Thakuriah (2012), "Ridership effects of real time bus information system: A case study in the City of Chicago," Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, Vol. 22 pp [4] Aaron Steinfeld and John Zimmerman, "Interviews with transit riders in San Francisco and Seattle," ed, [5] Brian Ferris, Kari Watkins, and Alan Borning (2010), "OneBusAway: results from providing real time arrival information for public transit," in Proceedings of the 28th International CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, pp [6] A. Gooze, K. Watkins, and A. Borning (2013), "Benefits of Real Time Information and the Impacts of Data Accuracy on the Rider Experience," in Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., January 13, [7] Brakewood, Macfarlane and Watkins (2015). The Impact of Real Time Information on Bus Ridership in New York City. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, Volume 53, pp Mobile Apps and More! Coming soon! Android iphone Windows Phone Open Developer APIs modules/wiki 8 4

5 Seattle, WA: Original deployment Where is OneBusAway? Lappeenranta, Finland: In testing Rouge Valley, OR: 2015 York, ON: 2014 New York, NY: Adapted for the MTA (Bus Time) San Joaquin, CA: In testing Washington, DC: 2016 San Diego, CA: 2016 Atlanta, GA: 2013 Tampa Bay, FL: 2013 HART 2016 PSTA (in progress) Can add new agencies/regions easily Region 9 OneBusAway Challenges - Submitting issues Users are willing to send agencies feedback (which is good!) Potential source of information for improving multimodal travel but multiple reporting screens confuse users What issues can be reported isn t clear to user Single Contact Us contact point per region Many users don t discover structured stop/trip reporting 10 5

6 OneBusAway Challenges Managing issues Single regional contact point is difficult to manage Especially if multiple agencies Structured stop/trip reports only accessible to OneBusAway admins No pictures/reporting/ analytics features Can t communicate with user via structured stop/trip reports Supports only data issues, not infrastructure issues 11 How to address challenges? OneBusAway users are willing to report problems that affect multimodal travel How can we improve OneBusAway issue reporting to best harness this information? Make it easier for users to submit issues Make it easier for agencies to manage issues 12 6

7 Open311 Issue Reporting Protocol Standard Open311.org Pinellas County & City of St. Pete Using SeeClickFix.com for issue reporting / management SeeClickFix has an Open311 API 7

8 Solution - Leverage Open311 in OneBusAway Send feedback via Open311 protocol to ANY system Enables discovery of issue categories per geographic location Open311 Request issue categories for a location Send issue to server w/ contact info Open311 compliant system Open311 integration App can submit issues directly to any Open311 server (e.g., SeeClickFix) for any area Include picture attachment Categories and follow up questions defined by local municipalities, county, DOT Transit agency, city, county, or DOT is notified based on issue category and geographic bounds 16 8

9 Improved feedback experience 17 Reporting stop/infrastructure issues Categories for THIS LOCATION retrieved via Open

10 Reporting stop/infrastructure issues Sub categories also controlled via Open311 server 19 Benefits Automated geographic issue routing Before After Citizens have to individually contact each local government office Issue reports are automatically assigned to FDOT, Pinellas County, and others based on GIS data 20 10

11 Benefit Improved D7 workflow Before After Government entities manage issue reports via Issue reports are managed via centralized issue reporting tool (SeeClickFix) Issues are automatically assigned to proper department based on issue category Issue categories defined by government office 21 Benefit Advanced analytics tools 22 11

12 Current status Started OneBusAway limited beta at Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA, in Pinellas County) on May 3 rd invitation to 2000 riders Full PSTA rollout planned August 1st Research project runs through early 2017 Will be monitoring reported issues and agencies experiences Any OneBusAway region can use their own Open311 server to receive and manage issues Vendor options ( Open source options ( 23 Thanks! Funding: Florida Department of Transportation and National Center for Transit Research (NCTR) Project Manager: Elba Lopez, FDOT District 7 Contact: Sean J. Barbeau, Ph.D. barbeau@cutr.usf.edu