01372718

Component

In the midst of operating their service, transit agencies must continually respond to situations such as construction, detours, accidents, severe weather, or special events. Response to these events often comes in the form of temporary service modifications such as reroutes, skipped stops, or canceled service. Agencies are doing a better job of alerting riders to such modifications by using more types of media, including email, web, text-message and social media. Currently, these alerts are usually sent out for an entire agency or an entire route. While clearly better than no alerts, the result for riders can be a firehouse of information, most of it not relevant to their own trips. For this initiative, the OneBusAway team worked with agencies in the Pacific Northwest to develop a web application and SIRI data repeater to allow the entry and reporting of service alert data in a standard format that enables capturing, sharing, and linking it to other real-time information sources. This paper describes the project context, the web application and repeater, and a prototype rider tool that makes use of these customized service alerts. The goal of this effort is to help agencies to be able to specify targeted alerts for specific stops, routes, trips, vehicles, and combinations thereof, so that riders receive only the information they want and need.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP020 Emerging and Innovative Public Transport and Technologies

01362476

12-1647

English

14p

2012

Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References

Bus transit; Information dissemination; Passenger information systems; Real time information; Social media; Web applications

OneBusAway

Alerts

Puget Sound Region

Data and Information Technology; Passenger Transportation; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2012 Paper #12-1647

TRIS, TRB

Feb 8 2012 5:03PM