Mountain Metropolitan Transit (METRO): Advanced Transit Intelligence Reporting
Download PDF"Before installing Trapeze ViewPoint it took us days to complete our monthly reports. With ViewPoint, it only takes moments. ViewPoint packages all the information together in an easy to use application. We love the ability to develop and analyze our own reports and create graphs, export through Excel and e-mail, all through a web browser. You don’t have to be a Trapeze expert to utilize ViewPoint!"
Wendy Patterson, Senior Information Systems Analyst Supervisor, Mountain Metropolitan Transit
Background
Mountain Metropolitan Transit (METRO) is the public transportation operator for Colorado Springs. The city, situated at the base of the Rocky Mountains, is the second largest in the state of Colorado with a population of well over 400,000.
METRO operates 18 local bus routes as well as commuter bus services to Denver and other cities in the region. The agency has been using Trapeze software solutions for its fixed route and demand response services since 2001.
Challenges
Before adapting Trapeze ViewPoint to collect Business Intelligence, METRO employees used a wide range of reporting methods and gathered information from many sources.
Administrators spent days and days collecting data and generating reports: they utilized PASS standard reports to check on-time percentage, spider web reports to observe hours and route productivity, and Excel spreadsheets for operations management. Occasionally, administrators would have to improvise when gathering specific information for reporting purposes.
Overall, hundreds of administrator hours were spent providing reports for managers and executives.
In an environment of ever shrinking budgets, METRO had to find a way to create standardized reports faster and more cost-efficiently.
| Snapshot | |
|---|---|
| Type of service: | Public and Paratransit Transport |
| Number of vehicles: | 48 Fixed Route Vehicles, 48 Paratransit Vehicles |
| Number of Fixed Routes: | 18 |
| Paratransit Trips per Day: | 600 |
| Trapeze products used: | PASS, PASS SUS, FX, OPS, COM, PLAN, ITS/AVL, Mapmaker, ViewPoint |
Solution
METRO installed ViewPoint, Trapeze’s transit intelligence tool. This Executive Information System has been built to allow agency employees to easily access, analyze and distribute operational data. ViewPoint provides METRO with a single point of access to all of its key performance indicators. Each night the system imports data from all of the Trapeze back office solutions, consolidates it into a data warehouse built for Business Intelligence reporting and makes the data available for analysis. Equipped with over 200 standard reports and dashboards, ViewPoint leverages the collective transit expertise but has also been designed to accommodate uniqueness. It does this by providing historical information at a glance through its interactive dashboards and also allows the agency to configure and develop their own reports.
METRO configured ViewPoint to meet its specific needs and currently uses the system for contract compliance, on-time performance, verifying trips and missed trips, miles and hours, driver and route issues as well as NTD reporting.
Results / Conclusion
Finally, METRO employees are able to pull reports in moments. What was once a tedious, time-consuming exercise, now is a quick, standardized, yet highly flexible process. METRO staff benefits greatly from using ViewPoint and creating and analyzing their own reports. Scrambling for data and improvised reporting methods are memories of the past.
In 2007 METRO was the first Trapeze client to go live with ViewPoint with an original release containing 58 key performance indicators. Recently, the agency upgraded the system to include 110 indicators. We at Trapeze firmly believe that the greatest testimony to the quality of our solutions are decade-long, returning customers such as METRO.
We are looking forward to continue our partnership with
