Offering real-time arrival information to riders via mobile applications has been shown to improve the rider’s perception of transit, and even increase ridership. This direct connection to riders also offers the agency an opportunity to collect feedback on how transit service and infrastructure can be improved. However, managing the sheer volume of this rider feedback can be very challenging, especially when various departments and agencies (e.g., city/county government) are involved (e.g., does this broken bench belong to the transit agency or the county?). This presentation discusses a pilot project in Tampa, FL, funded by the Florida Department of Transportation and the National Center for Transit Research, which focused on the improvement of the feedback loop from riders back to transit agencies, local government, and departments of transportation. This project made improvements to the OneBusAway mobile app, originally deployed in Tampa in 2013, to include support for the Open311 standard (http://www.open311.org/) for issue reporting. Open311 support gives agencies the option of selecting a hosted issue management solution that supports Open311 such as SeeClickFix.com and PublicStuff.com, or the option to utilize existing open-source Open311-compliant software. See the recorded webcast at http://www.cutr.usf.edu/2016/07/cutr-webcast-improving-transit-through-crowdsourced-information/.

1. Center for Urban Transportation Research | University of South Florida
Closing the Loop - Improving Transit
through Crowd-sourced Information
Sean J. Barbeau, Ph.D.
Center for Urban Transportation Research
University of South Florida

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?

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

5. 5

6. 6
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 http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/jpodocs/repts_te/13935/13935.pdf#sthash.jwn5Oltr.dpuf
[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. 146-161.
[4] Aaron Steinfeld and John Zimmerman, "Interviews with transit riders in San Francisco and Seattle," ed, 2010.
[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. 1807-1816.
[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, 2013.
[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. 59-7

7. 7
Mobile Apps and More!
Android Windows PhoneiPhone
Coming soon!
Open Developer APIs - https://github.com/OneBusAway/onebusaway-
application-modules/wiki

8. 8
Seattle, WA:
Original deployment
New York, NY:
Adapted for the MTA
(Bus Time)
Washington, DC:
2016
Atlanta, GA:
2013
Tampa Bay, FL:
2013 HART
2016 PSTA (in progress)
York, ON:
2014
Rouge
Valley, OR:
2015
Where is OneBusAway?
San Joaquin, CA:
In testing
San Diego, CA:
2016
Lappeenranta, Finland:
In testing
Can add new agencies/regions easily -
https://github.com/OneBusAway/onebusaway/wiki/Multi-Region

9. 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” email
contact point per region
– Many users don’t
discover structured
stop/trip reporting

10. 10
OneBusAway Challenges – Managing
issues
• Single regional email
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. 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. Open311 – Issue Reporting Protocol
Standard
Open311.org

13. Pinellas County & City of St. Pete
• Using SeeClickFix.com for issue
reporting / management
• SeeClickFix has an Open311 API

14. Solution - Leverage Open311 in
OneBusAway
• Send feedback via Open311 protocol to ANY
system
• Enables discovery of issue categories per
geographic location
Open311
Open311-
compliant
system
Request issue categories for a
location
Send issue to server w/ contact info

15. 15
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. 16
Improved feedback experience

17. 17
Reporting stop/infrastructure issues
Categories for
THIS LOCATION
retrieved via
Open311

18. 18
Reporting stop/infrastructure issues
Sub-categories
also controlled
via Open311
server

19. 19
Benefits – Automated geographic issue
routing
Before
Citizens have to individually contact each
local government office
After
Issue reports are automatically assigned to FDOT,
Pinellas County, and others based on GIS data

20. 20
Benefit – Improved D7 workflow
Before
• Government entities manage issue
reports via email
After
• 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. 21
Benefit – Advanced analytics tools

22. 22
Current status
• Started OneBusAway limited beta at Pinellas Suncoast
Transit Authority (PSTA, in Pinellas County) on May 3rd
– Email 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
(http://wiki.open311.org/GeoReport_v2/Support/)
– Open-source options
(http://wiki.open311.org/GeoReport_v2/Resources/)

23. 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
813.974.7208

24. 24

25. 25
Contact Agency Customer Service
• 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, agency_url
Hillsborough Area Regional
Transit
Pinellas Suncoast Transit
Authority

26. 26
Reporting stop/infrastructure issues

27. 27

28. Background – OneBusAway
Tampa
● Started as research pilot by USF
● Launched as HART’s customer-facing
real-time mobile apps in Aug. 2013
● Current USF focus:
 Adding Pinellas Suncoast Transit
Authority (PSTA)
 Adding USF Bull Runner
 Improving feedback process from riders
• Funded via National Center for Transit
Research and FDOT Central Office
tampa.onebusaway.org

29. 29
OBA – Android app

30. 30
Service Alerts / Surveys