Every enterprise produces lots of data and none are entirely sure what to do with it. In the transit world, this is exacerbated by the need to be innovative, while also doing more with less.
The issues are common: challenges around connecting and synthesizing disparate data sets, integration headaches, uncertainty around prioritization of data or what should be analyzed, and an urgent need to look at and action data in near real-time to solve problems and/or create opportunities.
The mobile sector is a leader here, particularly around extracting valuable commercial intelligence by measuring in-app behaviors. But it’s not just apps. Healthcare, legal, insurance services and other sectors are doing things that transit can learn from, too.
Mobile Apps
One important thing happening in the apps world that transit can learn from involves a seismic shift to focus on tiny data rather than big data. Whereas big data is a mine, tiny data is the vein where the gold hides. Over time, data-rich app developers have learned to zero-in on a handful of data points with the most value — every decision and every investment of their organization’s time and energy is made in reference to this handful of data points.
Transit Parallel: The only data that matters in a given moment is whatever solves the problem or advances the objective. Creating dashboards that pull and visualize salient data helps to manage day-to-day KPI performance. Tools to support decisions, build plans and automate actions can help assure agency decision making is always data-driven.
Health and Wellness
The healthcare industry is a tremendous producer and consumer of data. Recent advances in accelerometers and other sensor technologies in hospitals, medical devices and also in-home patient settings have created a tsunami of data that doctors and researchers are using to break new ground in treatments, facilities design and remote patient care. The holy grail is to integrate data from fragmented health systems, EHRs (electronic health records) and the consumer’s personal sphere to create a 360 degree picture of health and wellness. Private sector money is pouring in to finance the innovations: 692 funding deals and IPOs totalling about 12.5 billion in the U.S. in 2015 alone.
Transit Parallel: Recent advances in onboard sensors, CAD/AVL and MAP-21 have created the opportunity for agencies to break new ground in asset management, performance optimization and capital planning. The unicorn on the horizon is a ubiquitously connected transit ecosystem spanning the agency, its partners and full context of its ridership. But to arrive to that, funding sources must take a note from healthcare’s playbook and realize the benefit of investing in disruptive technology.
Claims Litigation and Insurance Services
History was made in 2015 when data from a personal Fitbit was entered into evidence for a personal injury claim made by a Canadian woman. The idea was to use the tool to quantify the victim’s level of impairment post-injury and advance or deny the claim. The same wearable data-driven technology is now being applied by insurance companies around the world, with some offering rate reductions for those individuals (and organizations) that are willing to share data about their activity levels and sleep patterns.
Transit Parallel: The corollary here is clear. A previously unreferenced or non-existent data set comes online – in the case above, that’s steps and minutes of sleep. In the transit world, maybe it’s connecting your automatic fare collection (AFC) data for the first time to get better at stop-level analysis. The point is that introducing new data into old processes is a fantastic way to jumpstart innovation and generate business value.
What’s Next
The transit industry has lagged behind others in how “information-rich” it is; but now it can use the perspective of other industries to improve going forward.
The apps world teaches us the importance of using fresh, contextual data to manage every journey to a good specific outcome. Health and wellness mirrors transit’s complex technical and business challenges around data integration and sharing. And the sensors that are collecting step and sleep data from individuals aren’t much different than the sensors on your bus, reporting mileage and faults.
Every challenge public transit faces in becoming more information-rich has been successfully met in other industries. Innovative agencies will consider these hard-earned lessons in the context of their own operations to craft the future of public transit.
Marsha Moore is chief technology officer at Trapeze Group. Moore has more than 30 years of IT experience and has remained a forerunner in software development, specifically in passenger transportation.
