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Case Study: Dallas Area Rapid Transit

Snapshot

Company:Dallas Area Rapid Transit
Type of Operation: Paratransit and Fixed Route
Number of Vehicles: 126
Number of Trips per day: 2,000
Products Used: PASS, FX, FLEX, OPS, INFO
Additional Technology:MDT, AVL, IVR
IT Environment: Windows NT with Oracle database

in 1997

Passengers per hour 1.31
On-time performance 84.5%
Complaints/1000 27.6
Commendations/1000 0.14

in 1999

Passengers per hour 1.60
On-time performance 97.2%
Complaints/1000 1.4
Commendations/1000 0.50

Business Problem

Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) provides 30,000 paratransit service hours per month and handles more than 2,400 reservations per day.

In 1997, the organization was struggling with several issues, including potential Y2K problems, too few passengers per hour, an on-time rate of 84.5% and more than 27 complaints per thousand passengers. Cancellations were running at 17% and commendations were unacceptably low.

Goals

To provide cost-effective paratransit services, DART needed to reduce trips from 3,000 per day to 2,000 and cut its hours of operation. To preserve its level of service to passengers, paratransit and fixed route scheduling needed to be integrated. Identifying and tracking paratransit clients who could be trained to use fixed route services would also reduce the load on its paratransit services.

DART recognized that on-time performance and passengers per hour needed to improve dramatically. And to tackle the Y2K problem and drive efficiency throughout the organization, they would also need a robust company-wide database.

The Solution

DART invested in technology solutions that would improve efficiency and productivity while maintaining a superior level of service. Trapeze was selected to implement a number of software components including:

• Fixed route scheduling and planning
• Paratransit scheduling and dispatching
• Commendations and complaints management
• Suspension management
• Ridesharing
• Operations (bidding, dispatching and timekeeping)
• Agent-attended customer service

During this five-phase project, Trapeze provided on-site project management, hardware/software configuration and installation, data conversion, training, data development, go-live support and testing over a three-year period.

Results

DART successfully reduced its number of daily paratransit trips to 2,000. The Trapeze system will enable DART to identify eligible clients for fixed route training, as well as to develop scenarios to reorganize subscription trips by integrating fixed route information, for more efficient schedules and routes.

DART’s productivity and efficiency goals were also achieved. Over a two-year period, passengers per hour increased from 1.31 to 1.6, and on-time performance soared to more than 97%. Customer service also improved with complaints per thousand passengers falling from 27.6 to just 1.4 and commendations rising from 0.14 to 0.50. Cancellations have decreased to 12.5% from 17%.

DART has since added other Trapeze components including mobile data terminal (MDT), automatic vehicle location (AVL), and automated telephone booking (using IVR - Interactive Voice Response).

DART staff credit the success of this implementation to the strong senior-level commitment from all players and to the dedicated on-site project management and staff training provided by Trapeze.