Improving Transit Through Crowdsourced Information Sean J Barbeau

Improving Transit Through Crowdsourced Information Sean J. Barbeau, Ph. D. National Center for Transit Research Center for Urban Transportation Research University of South Florida Center for Urban Transportation Research | University of South Florida

Challenges • Florida has highest bike/pedestrian fatality rate per capita in the nation • Need to identify ways to make multimodal travel safer – Listen to public! – Especially transit, bike, and walk travelers • Issues that affect travel are cross-jurisdictional – Difficult for public to understand who manages specific infrastructure (street, light, sidewalk, bike lane, etc. ) • How can we improve issue reporting from the public to government? 2

Cross-jurisdictional Challenges I want to report a broken bench …sand in bike lane …broken sidewalk At bus stop? Yes Bench color? No In city limits? Gray Green No Contact county Yes Contact city Contact nonprofit Contact transit agency Contact DOT? Contact local municipality? Which one?

24 incorporated municipalities 5 Slide credit – Pinellas County

What is One. Bus. Away? • What? Suite of tools that provides real-time bus/train tracking information – Open-source software project • Freely available to set up at your agency – Free to riders – Maintained by board, consortium of organizations • Universities • Transit Agencies • Vendors/Consultants • Why? Make riding public transit easier by providing good information in usable formats – Research can evaluate the impacts – No software licensing fees for agencies – Shared across regions = shared costs!! http: //onebusaway. org Real-time arrival info 6

Lots of One. Bus. Away users! • Around 324, 000 active users on i. OS and Android – Have used the app in the last 30 days – Seattle, Tampa, Washington D. C. , San Diego, etc. • Around 35, 000 active users in Tampa Bay • Users keep using the app after installing – Around 30% user retention rate on Android, vs. less than 10% for most apps 7

Potential solution • Crowdsource issue information from One. Bus. Away users • How can we improve One. Bus. Away to best harness this feedback? – Make it easier for users to submit issues – Make it easier for agencies to manage issues 8

Open 311 – Issue Reporting Protocol Standard Open 311. org

Solution - Leverage Open 311 in One. Bus. Away • Send feedback via Open 311 protocol to ANY system • Enables discovery of issue categories per geographic location Open 311 Request issue categories for a location Send issue to server w/ contact info Open 311 compliant system

Enhanced app issue report interface Categories controlled via Open 311 server 11

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One. Bus. Away automatically adds trip metadata 13

Deployment – Jan 30 to Aug 1 (6 mo. ) • 677 issue reports in Hillsborough County – 87% related to arrival times and schedules – 13% related to other categories (including 14 safety concerns) 14

Cross-jurisdictional safety issues • Example cross-jurisdictional safety issues (left – electrical box open, right – broken storm drain) reported by One. Bus. Away users 15

Bus stop safety issue reported “This stop is dangerous and should be moved. It is at Mac. Dill and Granada serving …South Tampa Flex. There is on-street parking directly in front of it. If someone is parked there bus patrons must step partially into the street to be seen by the driver, which puts them at risk of being hit by a passing motorist. Better location…would be either north of Barcelona, in front of Datz Deli, which has a parking lot, or Mac. Dill and Santiago 16

Positive feedback “Bus driver was kind enough to wait for everyone that got there by departure time. My husband I are disabled so we can't run for buses anymore. This driver was patient while we walked to the stop. Just polite and kind. Bus 1510 not sure of operator number. Please thank him for his good attitude from 2 loyal patrons. ” 17

Conclusions • Reduced issue reporting complexity for public – Can capture additional issue types (e. g. , safety) • Reduced overhead for agency managing issues – Transit metadata attached to each issue report • More efficient internal and cross-agency/jurisdiction communication – Able to track metrics for performance goals • Open-source – Very simple for anyone to replicate same system and results elsewhere • Better agency asset management – Allows agency to use same reporting tools internally 18

Future research • Guidance for issue reporting categories – Similar categories would help cross-agency analysis, but need to allow some variation – “TCRP REPORT 179 - Use of Web-Based Rider Feedback to Improve Public Transit Services” came to same conclusion • Open 311 standard improvements – Service discovery in a region – Direct image submission – Hidden fields for metadata • Additional data collection from 324 k active users – “Micro-surveys” – Tracking origin-destination (OD) data • Analysis of various issue types – For example - prediction error reports by location 19

Thanks! Funding: Florida Department of Transportation and National Center for Transit Research Principal Investigator: Sean J. Barbeau, Ph. D. barbeau@cutr. usf. edu 813. 974. 7208 Project Manager: linkedin. com/in/seanbarbeau Elba Lopez, FDOT District 7 @sjbarbeau 20

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Issues automatically routed to agency User reports problem (location automatically included) Issue is routed using geographic boundaries and issue category 22

Reporting stop/infrastructure issues Categories controlled via Open 311 server 23

Enhanced app issue report interface Categories controlled via Open 311 server 24