Calculating Ridership From All Sources

Why You Need Transit Software that Pulls In All Your Ridership Sources to Consolidate Reporting

Let TransTrack calculate your ridership for you.

The transit industry has experienced many changes over the last couple of years. The pandemic transformed the nature of many job positions and forced agencies to make deviations in processes that may have been originally entirely manual. One area that we've seen change the most is how agencies collect ridership data for local and federal reporting. Many people who had the industry knowledge for these positions left or took retirement options, leaving agencies to scramble to recreate old processes or make new processes altogether.

"Over the last two years, we've seen a large exodus of the positions that used to manage the reporting for these agencies. Many people retired or took positions elsewhere, which has left many agencies in a precarious position as they work to fill the hole left by these positions," said Kelly Coughlin-Tran, Director of Marketing & New Initiatives.

Agencies that typically calculated ridership by matching it to their fare collection have been significantly impacted since the start of the pandemic. Many of these agencies went through various changes in fare collection modes. Some of these modes include suspending fares for a brief period, eliminating printed tickets and using mobile ticketing instead, or going fare-free like Kansas City Area Transportation Authority with no plans to begin collecting fares again.

While these changes have helped slow COVID spread, it has also made it very difficult for transit agencies to collect accurate data for reporting.

One pain point we often hear from our customers is that they have multiple spreadsheets open collecting data from various vendors that don't integrate with each other. Agency staff can spend days manually pulling in ridership data from the fareboxes while also reconciling it with APC counters that may or may not be calibrated accurately. To make matters more complicated, many agencies contend with multiple service modes; deviated routes, paratransit, and on-demand, oh my! The reporting process gets arduous when it's time to do local, state, and federal reporting while reconciling multiple data sets. When staff is confronted by the pressures of maintaining this data and providing timely reporting, there is no doubt that they are at times thinking that there's no place like home.

The good news is that there is an easier way to collect and manage ridership data.

Our TransTrack Manager application can act as the single source for ridership data, no matter how you manage your ridership today.

"No matter what systems you have or how you collect data, it can be entered into TransTrack and managed within the system," said Dave Jackson, General Manager of TransTrack and longtime transit consultant.

The TransTrack Manager can automatically organize all of your disparate sources of ridership information; whether your data comes in through the farebox, mobile ticketing, paratransit scheduling systems, APCs, trip sheets, or transportation network company (TNC)s. However you retrieve your ridership data, we can assist.

TransTrack consolidates data, organizes data, and provides year-over-year comparison reporting.

"Our system allows for easy service changes or changes in our customers' technologies. Business changes often, and TransTrack is flexible enough to help transition with it, "commented Dan McCaslin, Director of Operations.

Data automation is the next step in ridership data management. Integrate an automated data management system today with the TransTrack Manager.

Below you will find a sampling of just three of our many automated reports from the TransTrack Manager demonstrating how we can display agency ridership. To find out more, contact our team today by clicking here.

-Displays ridership by passengers, revenue hours, and passenger/hour
-Displays the number of passengers by specified fare types
-Displays ridership over a period of time
-Allows agencies to drill down to see specific information by time period, route, or service type, consolidating reports to provide comparisons

 

- Organizes data and draws attention to information gaps in an easy to display format
- Lists the ridership by year, month, or day depending on the filters
- Helps agencies right-size the fleet by showing ridership relationships and stop level data

-Displays aggregate data for ridership by mode and by year

-Highlights functional ridership areas (trip generators) for prioritizing improvements  

-TransTrack Solutions Group-
TransTrack Solutions Group (TTSG) is home to the TransTrack Manager, a scalable enterprise data management system, serving more than 50 agencies for over 20 years. TTSG prides itself on hiring transit professionals to help other transit professionals. TTSG can and has managed NTD ridership reporting from all sources. For more information, visit our website at https://www.transtracksystems.net/

Authors:

Dave Jackson, General Manager at TransTrack Solutions Group
Dan McCaslin, Director of Operations at TransTrack Solutions Group
Nathan Atherstone, Senior Consultant
Kelly Coughlin-Tran, Director of Marketing & New Initiatives at TransTrack Solutions Group