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HomeMy WebLinkAbout36. Passenger Tracking System for Oshkosh Transit #11C41illo'D'e OfHKOJH City of Oshkosh - Transportation Department ON THE WATER 926 Dempsey Trail, Oshkosh, WI 54902 (920) 232-5342 (920)232-5343 fax MEMORANDUM TO: Mark Rohloff, City Manager FROM: Christopher Strong, P.E., Director of Transportation'tc DATE: May 4, 2012 RE: PASSENGER TRACKING SYSTEM FOR OSHKOSH TRANSIT The first goal listed among five that the Common Council assigned to you at its February 14, 2012 meeting is as follows: "1. Develop a tracking system for the Oshkosh Transit System. Plan the implementation of a system to track and provide data reporting and analysis of all bus users by location. Include the implementation plan and required resources for the tracking system in the 2013 budget. " The purpose of this memo is to discuss and compare potential approaches to meet this goal. Staff Understanding of Background for This Goal During last summer's discussions regarding the Transit Development Plan, some Council members expressed concern as to the plan's recommendations for new routes. In some cases, it was felt that the data used to develop the plan were lacking or incorrect. During the budget workshops, at least one Council member suggested that there could be benefits in having better data on understanding the trips that riders are making on the transit system. Staff Understanding of This Goal Staff assumes the following definitions from the goal: • "system"—A technology-based approach is envisioned, which requires negligible staff involvement to sustain on an ongoing basis. • "track"—This implies that the system is intended to collect regular, if not continuous, data, rather than isolated "snapshots" in time. • "all bus users"—This implies that the system must cover all bus routes under our service, and all users of those buses, regardless of time of day. This may also imply that data are expected to be collected for individual trips, correlating a passenger's specific origin with a specific destination. • "by location"—The system is concerned with where trips are coming from and going to, but not as much with demographic or market information, such as passenger age or trip purpose. City of Oshkosh—Department of Transportation Passenger Tracking System for Oshkosh Transit/May 4,2012 Technology Approaches to Meeting This Goal Staff is not aware of any transit system in the United States that has implemented a technology solution that would attain all of the aspects indicated above. There are some proven technological approaches that could address parts of this goal. 1. Full Electronic Fare Payment System Since every passenger must provide a fare (or show the driver that there is no need for a fare) to board a bus, then every passenger can be theoretically intercepted through a fully implemented electronic fare payment system. Under conventional electronic fare payment systems, a passenger uses a fare payment media, such as a stored value card, to pay for fares. This card may be read using contactless technology (akin to some bar code readers), or a swipe-type reader(akin to a credit card reader). The reader either deducts a fare or, in some rail systems, calculates a distance-based fare according to where the rail trip started and ended. Bus systems that have implemented electronic fare payment typically use the fare reader only when someone boards the bus. To meet staffs understanding of the Council's goal, the fare payment system would need to be able to track both when passengers board the bus and when they leave. This means that passengers would need to pay or show a fare on both ends of the trip, instead of only as they board (current practice). This technology aligns with a recently submitted grant application that would secure electronic fareboxes for our buses. The cost estimate for these fareboxes is about $15,000 per bus ($250,000 for the fleet); however, this excludes the costs of extra farecard readers that would be needed at the rear vestibules (for passengers leaving the bus), and any additional costs for integrating other fare media, such as the Titan ID Card, that might be necessary. It is unknown whether additional investment would be required to support detailed trip-level analysis of fares that have been paid. This technology offers several benefits. Using electronic fare payment for passenger tracking provides the best opportunity to track where each user boards and exits the bus. In some cases, this system can generate some demographic/market segment data, as some fare payment categories are associated with specific user groups (for example, UWO, elderly and disabled). From an operational perspective, the technology has benefits with auditing revenue collection and loss control. In addition, the technology could provide the ability to implement a distance- based fare structure, which might be a benefit in the future. This approach, however, has several drawbacks where it would conflict with current operational practice in ways that could potentially have adverse effects on ridership. • Many passengers, such as children under 5 or UWO affiliates, do not need to pay a fare when they board, and therefore would likely not have a fare card. • UWO affiliates currently use a Titan ID, which would not be compatible with this system without additional efforts at integration. • Cash or tokens would not be allowed in this system. City of Oshkosh—Department of Transportation 2 Passenger Tracking System for Oshkosh Transit/May 4, 2012 • Most importantly, this technology would require passengers to pay/show a fare when they leave the bus, which will increase inconvenience for customers, create congestion as people are leaving the bus, and make it more difficult to keep buses on schedule. 2. Automatic Passenger Counting Automatic passenger counting (APC) can be understood as a"break-the-beam"technology which counts bodies or objects as they leave or enter the vehicle. APC readers can be installed at both the front and rear doors of the bus and can track both boarding and alighting. The technology is frequently used in heavy rail transportation, but also has been successfully used on urban buses. Using APC avoids some of the problems that were involved with the electronic fare payment system. People can pay their fares as they currently do, and the APC system acts "in the background" to collect the data. As an independent system, the APC would not require the transit system to change any existing policies with respect to fare collection or rider expectations. APC can eventually be used to simplify some Federal reporting requirements; however, this can only occur after a lengthy (-12 month) calibration period. Implementing this would require retrofitting all of our buses to have APC sensors on both the front and rear doors. The basic APC equipment is estimated to cost approximately $9,000 per vehicle, or about $150,000 for the fleet. It is unknown whether this basic package has the GPS capability that would be required to give location-specific information. Staff has not pursued funding for APC previously, so this would require funding that would need to be pursued through a combination of grants and future Capital Improvement Program requests. This system would fall short of staff's understanding of the Council's goal, as it would not be capable of tracking boardings and alightings for specific passengers. For example, it could identify the number of people boarding at the downtown transit center, and the number of people alighting at Washburn Street and 9th Avenue, but it could not identify how many people were going from the downtown transit center to Washburn Street and 9th Avenue. 3. Automatic Vehicle Location w/Tablet Interface Automatic vehicle location (AVL) using GPS is quite common in the transit industry, and is currently in use on many City vehicles. By itself, this technology would merely provide a time- stamped sequence of the locations of where a bus has been. Many vendors have developed systems where the AVL is integrated with a fare collection system (as described under option 1). One way to avoid the operational and customer service problems associated with option 1 is to have the AVL integrated with a simpler interface. Currently, transit operators use a clicker to count the number of fare payments by type as they make each circuit. Operators then manually copy this information onto "trip sheets" when they return to the transit center at the end of a circuit. The clicker is a manual device without any geographic reference. Replacing the clicker with a touch-screen tablet interface would support the creation of a data set of passenger boarding information, with time and location references, without any additional burden on City of Oshkosh—Department of Transportation 3 Passenger Tracking System for Oshkosh Transit/May 4,2012 operators. Commercial off-the-shelf AVL systems could cost $300,000 for the fleet, which would offer additional functional capabilities that may be beyond what we need; however, these may not be integrated with the tablet interface as described. The Council approved $100,000 toward AVL implementation in the 2012 Capital Improvement Program. Based on conversations with a couple of vendors, we believe that amount may be sufficient to develop a custom system which might have fewer functional features than the more expensive AVL systems but would be better suited to meet our system's operational and customer service needs. An AVL-based platform offers several benefits. By generating real-time information on bus location, customers can know how soon a bus will actually arrive at their location. Our customer service staff can also reduce radio contact with operators, which reduces workload complexity for the drivers. It also helps to evaluate on-time performance, address route timing issues, and investigate customer complaints (such as speeding or route deviations). The data can also be automatically fed into an enterprise database, which will eliminate the time required for manual entry of trip sheets. This technology would fall short of staff's understanding of the Council's goal. Like the APC, the AVL is not set up to track individual passengers, and so it cannot generate a matrix of origin- destination trips. In addition, this would not be able to track where passengers exit the bus without significantly increasing the workload for operators, which will create issues similar to those described under option 1. Summary Table 1 summarizes each of the technology options for the passenger tracking system. None of the options meet all the criteria established by the Council. Table 1: Summary of Technology Options for Passenger Tracking System Option 1: Option 2: Option 3: Electronic Automatic AVL/GPS Fare Passenger with Tablet System Criteria Payment Counting Interface Automated Yes Yes Yes Continuous Tracking Yes Yes Yes Origin-Destination No No No Number and Location of Boardings Yes Yes Yes Number and Location of Alightings Optional Yes No Boarding-Alighting Pair for Possible No No Individual User Real-Time Optional Optional Yes City of Oshkosh—Department of Transportation 4 Passenger Tracking System for Oshkosh Transit/May 4,2012 Origin-Destination For transit planning purposes, it is often valuable to know the ultimate origin and destination of a trip. Transit service that offers a shorter door-to-door travel time to the customer can be more appealing and can, in some cases, attract new ridership. None of these technology options provide a true origin-destination pair for each trip. In order to do this, it would be necessary to know where a person started their trip before he or she arrived at the bus, and where he or she went after alighting. To address this, some transit systems will conduct occasional origin-destination surveys of their riders. These manual surveys can be expensive to implement, especially depending on the level of statistical validity that is expected, and can provide only a snapshot in time of origins and destinations. Moreover, none of these technology options can answer questions of the potential ridership effects caused by changes in service, such as higher frequency or closer service to a popular destination. Potential ridership effects can be approximated through various efforts, including travel models and targeted surveys. Getting this information requires detailed information regarding the trips that people make, such as through trip diaries. Collecting and analyzing this information at a statistically meaningful level would require an extraordinarily expensive survey effort. Moreover, many trips simply cannot be accommodated effectively by transit in the near future (e.g. second or third shift work trips, trips to jobs in other cities, trips with multiple stops, trips involving large amounts of cargo, etc.). Data gathered through these origin-destination approaches can supplement data collected through one or more of the technology alternatives described earlier. However, they are not sufficient in themselves to address staffs understanding of the Council's goal. City of Oshkosh—Department of Transportation 5