Discusses some of the work currently underway to improve issue reporting in OneBusAway.

1. Center for Urban Transportation Research | University of South Florida
Improving Issue Reporting
in OneBusAway
Sean J. Barbeau, Ph.D.

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
● Issues that affect travel are cross-jurisdictional
o Difficult for the public to understand where an
infrastructure issue (street, light, sidewalk, bench,
bikelane, etc.) should be reported
o Can include city, county, FDOT, transit agencies
● How can we improve issue reporting from the
public to government?

3. OneBusAway
• Many bike/ped travelers use transit
• We can capture some feedback on potential
improvements from OneBusAway users
• We can also improve the current OneBusAway
feedback process:
1. Stop Problem Reporting – Goes to OBA Server
2. Trip Problem Reporting – Goes to OBA Server
3. Contact Us email – Goes to regional email
address

4. 4
CURRENT ONEBUSAWAY
ISSUE REPORTING PROCESS
How do user’s currently send feedback?

5. 5
OBA Feedback
• Currently three primary ways to send
feedback:
1. Stop Problem Reporting – Goes to OBA Server
2. Trip Problem Reporting – Goes to OBA Server
3. Contact Us email – Goes to regional email
address

6. 6
1. Stop Problem Reporting

7. 7
1. Stop Problem Reporting

8. 8
1. Stop Problem Reporting

9. 9
2. Trip Problem Reporting

10. 10
2. Trip Problem Reporting

11. 11
2. Trip Problem Reporting

12. 12
2. Trip Problem Reporting

13. 13
Viewing Stop and Trip Problem Reports
• Accessed via the regional OBA website

14. 14
3. Contact Us email

15. 15
3. Contact Us email

16. 16
3. Contact Us email
onebusaway@gohart.org
• Goes to the regional
OBA contact email
• Can include free text
about anything

17. 17
OneBusAway Feedback Challenges
• Trip and stop problem report viewing
interfaces are hidden behind main admin
account – tiered access not possible
– Also, no way to communicate back to user
• Contact Us emails can be a variety of different
problems, which may be owned by different
agencies/departments
• Difficult to triage/manage issue reports via
these channels

18. 18
IMPROVING
ONEBUSAWAY FEEDBACK
How can we improve the current process?

19. 19
How can we improve feedback
process?
• We want to make the feedback channels clearer
to users
– Direct them to the right channel, based on their
type of feedback
• We want to be able to reply to user reports
• Strategy - examine other tools designed for
triaging/management issue reports
– Open311.org standard
• Vendors such as SeeClickFix and PublicStuff
• Open-source software solutions
• Following are screenshots of how we plan to
revise the OneBusAway mobile app process

20. 20
OneBusAway Improvements

21. 21
Customer Service feedback
• Shows list of
agencies and
phone/email/
web contact
for each (if
available)
• Requires fields
in GTFS
agency.txt for
each agency –
agency_phone
, agency_email
(not currently
in GTFS spec),
agency_url
Hillsborough Area Regional
Transit
Pinellas Suncoast Transit
Authority

22. 22
Stop/Trip problem reports
• Submit to
Open311
backend if
available,
otherwise
submit to OBA
• Will default to
selected issue
type
• Allows user to
pick
stop/location
of problem
Arrival Time Issue
• Bus never came
• Bus came earlier
than predicted
• Bus came later
than predicted
• …
What problem did you see?

23. 23
App feedback
android-app@onebusaway.org
My location problems, no stops on map, etc.
• App feedback
goes to app
developers

24. 24
Ideas for new features
My location problems, no stops on map, etc.
• Ideas for new
features goes
to
OneBusAway
Ideascale site -
http://onebus
away.ideascale
.com/
• Users can vote
on ideas

25. 25
TAMPA PILOT
How we plan to deploy this in Tampa

26. Pinellas County & City of St. Pete
• Using SeeClickFix.com

28. SeeClickFix features
• Branded mobile apps
• Allows users to simply report a problem, complete with
image and location
• Internally directs the report to proper jurisdiction
• Pinellas County / City of St. Pete define the issue
categories, follow-up questions, and jurisdictional
boundaries
• Pinellas County / City of St. Pete can triage issues and
close issues when they are resolved
• “Facebook” style comments, citizens can “upvote”
issues
• Management reports can be run

29. Pinellas County
• Contacts:
– Martin Rose, CIO
– Michael Roiland, Web Manager
• Started as pilot ($40 per month) in 2011
• City of St. Pete began participating
• In June 2014, signed up for enterprise license
(approx. $12k per year) for branded apps,
unlimited internal users, all issue management
and reporting tools
• Willing to provide PSTA a user under their
account to monitor activity related to transit

30. Tampa Pilot
• We’re modifying OneBusAway to submit
issues via the Open311 standard
– Android app will serve as pilot
• In Tampa, pilot will submit issues to
SeeClickFix.com (Open311-compliant)
• PSTA, FDOT, and HART plan to
participate
– HART SeeClickFix license TBD
• Estimated to start late 2015

31. 31
Thanks!
Sean J. Barbeau, Ph.D.
barbeau@cutr.usf.edu
813.974.7208
Principal Mobile Software Architect for R&D
Center for Urban Transportation Research
University of South Florida