The fact that Transportation Techies (our geeky meet-up group) even exists shows that we swim in a sea of data.

Luckily, there’s a conversation bubbling among transit agencies and advocates about how best to interpret and communicate the travel data that agencies collect.

Transportation Techies’ Bus Hack Night III provided a platform for tech-focused transportation officials and for coders to show what agencies and individuals are able to create with the information that already exists.

Getting meta(data)

Tim Witten from Blacksburg Transit, which serves Virginia Tech, discussed how he makes sense of the data he has available to keep up with booming ridership. He refers to this as pulling insights from the “data swamp.” To start, Witten explained how complete data sets are inherently messy, and anything that is clean and polished suggests important information is missing.

Because he serves a large university, Witten has a unique overcrowding problem: the last buses onto campus before morning classes begin tend to be over capacity, forcing drivers to pass over stops in closer to campus. To fix this, Witten wants to develop a tool that would help students spread demand for buses away from the last ride before classes start.

By combining datasets, like automated passenger counts and historical ridership information, the tool would tell students which buses are likely to have space, which ones could run out of space soon, and which ones are almost certain to be full by the time they reach the selected stop. Though this might not be helpful if a student is checking just before the final bus arrives, ideally it will quickly show them the value of waking up earlier for their next morning class.

Catherine Vanderwaart. Photo by Michael Schade.

Communicating system performance is another challenge. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA)’s Catherine Vanderwaart shared the MetroBus Speed Viewer, which hopes to address this difference.

This tool allows users to measure bus performance along specific street segments instead of full routes. Doing so helps entities such as the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) understand a system’s pain points and where they should direct their traffic-calming efforts.

Wylie Timmerman presented Foursquare ITP’s Transit Propensity Calculator, which pulls in Census data to help planners identify priority areas to provide certain types of transit. This, paired with WMATA’s Metrobus Speed Viewer, could help planners optimize routes.

Ting Ma. Photo by Michael Schade.

Ting Ma and Erik Belmont from DDOT’s DC Circulator shared how they use a performance dashboard to evaluate the introduction of electric buses into its fleet.

In particular, Ma and Belmont are curious about the best way to let buses regenerate power while driving downhill. While they know that descending hills helps buses recoup the energy they spend on the way up, they want to dig into the fact that some hills help better than others.

Having transit agencies open up not just their data but their process for using it is an important way to connect with the public. Not only does it show how they are proactive, if methodical, about how they invest in their systems, it allows for groups such as Transportation Techies to improve those processes.

Getting personal

Christian Moscardi proved it’s possible to hack together a bus arrival display that costs a fraction of what transit systems tend to pay for them: $115 compared to around $25,000 in New York. Moscardi accomplished this by utilizing public wifi hotspots near bus stops to display real-time arrival information for the next two or three buses.

The ability for the general public to build their own transit apps shows the power of open data, helping them create what works best for them. John Muyskens built a personal app in a weekend to make it look and function how he prefers when he looks for buses near his home.

Will Geary. Photo by Michael Schade.

Will Geary provided examples of how to visualize transportation options in major cities with his TransitFlow tool, which uses schedule data to show how entire transit systems “flow” around a region. Geary also shared Wayfinder3D, which maps trips and has transit, cars, and bikes “race” between the selected origins and destinations.

This points to the need to use tools to communicate the benefits of reducing driving. For example, Geary pointed out that biking beats driving in many of the trips that he mapped through New York City. Adding something like Wayfinder 3D into agencies’ toolboxes could serve as a powerful method for encouraging people to reconsider how they get around.

Love the intersection of transit and tech? Check out our recaps of Transportation Techies meetings. 

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