Balancing Transit Service and Community Needs During the Holiday Season

Stop requested.

Welcome to Stop Requested, a podcast where we discuss everything transit. I’m your host, Christian Londono, Senior Customer Success Manager at ETA Transit, and I’m your co-host Levi McCollum, product manager at ETA Transit. Hey Christian, how are you doing today?

Hey Levi, how are you doing? Doing good, doing good.

So today I think for the podcast, a good topic to cover since we’re coming up on the holiday season, Thanksgiving, we’ve got Christmas and Hanukkah and all these special times of the year for many people, it’s also a special time for agencies in that you’re operating most of the time, some form of holiday service.

Some agencies don’t operate at all on the major holidays. Some agencies operate a little bit of service. They might operate a Sunday schedule on a weekday, for example. Others just go a hundred percent.

Whatever day is that day for the scheduled service, that’s what they’re operating. So I thought we could talk about that. What do you think?

Yeah, I think it’s a great topic. And, you know, there’s a lot of holidays almost like back to back towards the end of the year. And, you know, some transit agencies decided to run service, indeed run service, some regular service.

A lot of other agencies too don’t have any service during those holidays. So I think it’s definitely a good topic of discussion because, you know, why should agencies run holiday service or just operate service during those days?

And why are there reasons some agencies are not running service? And how can we go about reflecting on it and identifying, you know, what’s the best practice or how we should think about holiday service?

So yeah, look forward to the conversation.

Excellent. Well, you know, some of the challenges with holiday service or, you know, the days around the holidays is the fluctuating ridership. It’s really hard to match your demand for that time. In some cases, you know, it might be just one for one.

And regardless of what day it is, people are going to get be out and about, they need to get on with their business and live their lives. In some cases, though, your your demand is lower, and you don’t really want to put out the supply that would surpass the demand, right?

The agency takes on a lot of costs. And for the operators for the maintenance staff, and those people in operations who are grinding every day, you know, they’re working on the holiday, they don’t get a holiday with their family.

So you want to make sure that you’re not oversupplying, but you need to be able to supply enough to match the demand. I mean, what do you what do you think of that? Is there is there something I’m missing?

Or should you just run service 100% no matter what?

Well, you know that no, I think you’re on point. People particularly want to be off during the holidays. That’s right. And that is why a lot of, you know, transit agencies, they will compensate beyond the regular compensation to the folks that are working the holidays.

And of course, you have that staffing constraints as it relates to it, because a lot of people are trying to be off during those days. But in terms of what happens during that day, it’s a day for people that day.

And that’s why I think it’s a very, very objective. I mean, it’s objective to every community in the sense that, you know, certain holidays, in certain communities, like, you know, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving is a holiday where a lot of the businesses are closed, you know, schools are closed.

And in terms of what happens during that day is a day for people to spend time with their families at home. So the mobility, the demand for mobility is significantly reduced on that day, right? Less people are going to work.

Less people are just going out, right? Because they’re just staying at home and spending with their families. So typically, those days, ridership is very low. However, some places open for work. So some people do have to get to work.

And some people have to, you know, they’re also traveling to go to to see grandma or, you know, visiting family. So they do need especially those that are transit dependent, right? Like, if you’re not spending Thanksgiving at home, but you’re going to your grandma’s house, or, you know, some, you know, a friend’s house, and you don’t have a car, then, you know, you’re depending on transit, so you can go on and,

you know, spend the holidays. So it fluctuates by community. And yes, you have to take a look at, you know, projections for demand, what’s the activity, or does, you know, traffic patterns look like in the community during the holidays.

But also, another thing to consider is just that the best way to know how to adjust your service is actually piloting the service, right, like putting some service out there and then measuring that performance, and, of course, communicating the service in advance with the rider.

So yes, there’s there’s challenges related to planning the service and what’s the right formula. But I think that one of the ways to get in front of the ridership of the activity that’s going to look like for that day is taking a look at what has historically happened during that day, you know, what what amount of the businesses and how are the roads looking like during those times.

What are things you think are important to keep in mind, Levi?

Well, I know as a planner and being adjacent to operations, almost an operational planner, I really dreaded this time of the year, of course, enjoyed it with my family, but also there are a lot of pains that come with it because you’re thinking about the service that you’re delivering and in a lot of cases, the environment in which you’re operating changes under your feet.

So sometimes it can be like having a rug pulled out from under you. And what I mean by that is with detours or special events, something going on downtown where you have to close some streets, that makes it really challenging to be able to figure out if you’re gonna be able to run your service as is, or, oh, hey, wait, this street’s gonna be closed, so I need to route this way, this is a one-way street,

how do I get back, turn around the other direction? There are a lot of logistical hurdles that you have to plan out well in advance. You can’t do this the week of. This has to be thought about months in advance.

You have to communicate with your stakeholders. Operations needs to know what they’re actually operating. The ad hoc approach where we’re just gonna wing it, it doesn’t work for this holiday season, especially for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and so on.

Yeah, in those detours, especially holiday related, you know, you have Fourth of July, a lot of downtowns are doing fireworks and so on. And closing a lot of the streets, it could cause significant delays.

So, you know, communication is very important. And even when you put a holiday detour in place, you have to make sure that all your bus operators and your operations team altogether, they’re aware of the detour, right?

The detour is something that, you know, as a bus operator, let’s say that I do route one every single day in and out, and I know my turns. I just do all the turns exactly the same. I don’t have to look at a paddleboard.

I don’t have to look at anything. I mean, I know the route very well, because that’s what I do every day in and out. But then holiday service comes, and then now we have some detours, specific detours that we’re putting in place for that one event.

It’s very important that everyone is aware, right? Not just the bus operator, of course, the bus operator, because if he’s trying to make that turn as he usually does, and then he’s making that turn, and then, oops, he find out that there’s a road closure and now he’s stuck.

You don’t want to be in that situation. But the other piece is your riders. You don’t want people to expect the bus to be coming down a road where, you know, we’re not providing service on due to the detour.

So that component is very important in terms of that communication and just making sure that everybody knows what the plan is, right? Like you’re not being caught, you know, by sort of

price. Exactly, exactly. I think you touched on something there that is oftentimes overlooked or it can easily be overlooked. How do you execute it and communicate it to the end user, the customer, the transit rider?

And that’s where I’m really interested in kind of digging a little bit deeper with you on this conversation. I want to talk about how technology can facilitate this process. Of course, we have GTFS and we have the new trip modifications standard that we can use to be able to communicate to the trip planning apps like, hey, this bus is on detour or this stop is closed.

But the CAD AVL system as well can be used to facilitate that. The AVL portion of the automatic vehicle location is communicating your latitude and longitude and being able to display that on the map.

So having GTFS and more importantly, in this case, GTFS real-time as an agency is critically important. I know that the national transit database now requires you to submit the static feed, but really the real-time feed should be forthcoming within the next few years as well because that is essential as a transit user to know where the vehicle is, to be able to track it in real time, to make sure that those updates are pinging every few seconds,

hopefully not every minute or every two minutes, but something more like every 10 seconds or even more frequently than that. What’s your experience working on the technology front in relation to dynamic services and adjusting services due to holidays?

The technology plays one of the most important roles, and you just spoke about GTFSRT. I think that all agencies should be looking at GTFSRT. Altogether, CAD AVL technology is one of the most important pieces of technology any transit agency has.

And it’s like you said, it shows real time where the vehicles are located. You’re communicating with the vehicle, you’re communicating with the bus operator, and then of course communicating through the customers, through the technology.

So in terms of best practices, at least what I’ve learned and what I heard from different transit professionals handling these type of situations. One is you don’t want the communication to be too early because then it becomes wide noise and people are not really paying attention of things that are going to happen in six months, as much as you don’t want the communication to be super late.

So if you’re trying to convey any kind of service modifications due to holidays, you don’t want to do it the day before, right? Because people don’t ride the service every single day. So the good rule of thumb is at least two weeks before the service change or the holiday or the detour is in place communicated through your riders.

And then again, use the technology. The technology allows you to really communicate with all the stakeholders. So bus operator is coming in. Of course, you might have some flyers or some internal screens that you use to convey this information to the bus operators in advance as well.

Hey, we’re going to have you know, a modified service for the Fourth of July. And you know, this is the detours that is going to be in place for that day. Or let’s say that you’re extending service or doing some special service because a lot of folks are trying to go see the fireworks.

So you’re adding additional service on a given route that will take them to that park or that downtown to see the fireworks. So you need to start doing that communication with them. But also the day off, you could have a message on the mobile data terminal, which is that piece of equipment where the driver is logging on for that trip.

So the driver gets on the bus. One thing agencies could do is have a reminder right there that pops up to the screen and say, hey, this trip is on a detour. We have a Fourth of July detour in effect today.

So that helps reminding the bus operator that they’re not going to be following the standard path for that route, but they’re now on a detour. And then the order pieces, and I would argue equally or even more important, is communicating to your customers.

So one piece of technology that I just enjoy a whole bunch lately, and I see a lot of transit agencies are now adding to their system, is infotainment. You have these screens inside the bus. Some agencies use one widescreen.

Some agencies use a couple of screens or a little bit more than a couple of screens inside the bus. And because you’re able to manage remotely the content on the screens, you could start a couple of weeks in advance telling your riders about the holiday service.

And you can actually put them in a specific route. If it’s route one or route two, route three, or if you use letters, route B or C, whichever route in your system, however you name it, if that route is going to be affected by that detour, then you could use the infotainment screens to start letting people know in advance.

You can also use your app. If you use an app, I know at ETA Transit, we have the Spot app, which is what our customers use and push to their riders. And through the app, you start putting service alerts and letting people know in advance what’s going to happen with that route on that day.

Yeah, you’re absolutely right. There is a gold in your mind. There’s the Goldilocks zone there where you don’t want to go too early. You don’t want to wait until it’s too late and you miss out on some of your writers who, like you said, don’t, uh, I don’t necessarily write the service every day, finding that sweet spot for the agency, which, you know, may differ depending on the community that you’re serving,

uh, but my experience mirrors yours in that inside of that two weeks is really when you want to start, uh, sounding the alarm, so to speak, the proverbial alarm and saying, Hey, you know, surface is changing.

We’re starting later. We’re starting earlier. We’re not running at all. Hopefully it’s not, you know, not running at all, but sometimes that is the case for some communities. Uh, so completely get where you’re coming from there, uh, and concur 100%.

I, I’d be, uh, the thing I wanted to follow up here with is using the technology as an operator, uh, and being able to communicate to dispatch. And I think this relates to, you know, detours, but it could be, you know, other cases too, something happens on the bus or, you know, maybe someone gets sick or maybe the bus breaks down, having a request to talk system that allows the dispatcher and the operator to communicate one-to-one,

uh, in private, if need be, uh, so you’re not just communicating in a big open channel where everybody hears what else is going on, especially if it’s sensitive, uh, that you can talk one-to-one. I know with, uh, one of our customers, Toledo, uh, that’s Tarda and Toledo, Ohio.

And we rolled out that, uh, uh, the radio integration feature that allowed them to, uh, be able to selectively choose who they want to speak to at that time. So the operator would request a talk and dispatch would take that request to talk and be able to have a conversation with just that operator on that one vehicle rather than, you know, everyone else hearing.

I think that that’s really important when it comes to detours or around this holiday season, because, you know, things are happening on the fly. You really have to be aware, cognizant of your surroundings, uh, the environment that you’re operating, having a more direct channel to an operator where there’s not a lot of radio noise, uh, you know, it, that can keep you focused and it keeps the service on schedule.

Uh, I think it makes the operations more efficient. You know, if there is something that the dispatcher learns from the operator, Oh, this street is closed or, Oh, that parade, it looks like it’s going longer than what we anticipated.

Then, Hey, I can do a dispatch or a broadcast message to all the operators in the fleet or select a couple routes that I know that that street is impacting and let those particular operators know, Hey, be on the lookout for this.

So technology plays such a huge part in being able to solve a very complex problem that evolves, you know, hour by hour, sometimes minute by minute.

And it’s about managing that communication. And yeah, that’s a really good point. I mean, you know, different transit agencies, depending on where they’re located, they have to coordinate with multiple jurisdictions.

You’re talking about, you know, traffic division and then, you know, different municipalities might have different events in different local streets that they’re closing. So you, as an agency, want to have, you know, strong channels of communication with all those partners, but I would not be surprised, and our listeners from different transit agencies, I would bet, you know, any money on it that you guys have been caught in a situation where there’s a street closure and a detour that was not expected.

And to your point, Levi, you know, we learn about those usually by bus operators. They’re the ones that are, you know, calling and saying, hey, this patch, I don’t know if you know about this, but we cannot, they just closed this trip right now and, you know, we cannot run down the street, so we’re asking for assistance, and usually they set a supervisor.

Yeah, eyes and ears, they’re the eyes and ears. But being able to intake that communication and, you know, that radio integration plays a critical, you know, factor in there and being able to have that close mic conversation, get the information from the driver and maybe use the radio to communicate just with the drivers that are affected to just be able to disseminate that information and respond to it.

So altogether, this technology is just critical to support the communication for holiday service. And again, there’s a lot of opportunities as we’re looking at this to enhance the riders’ experience altogether, you know, not just during the holidays, but, you know, during other days of service, but particularly talking about the holidays, how can an agency improve that rider experience during the holidays?

Either when there’s no holiday service or when they have some holiday service, what could they do to just make the rider experience better?

that’s a really great question. What can they do to make the service better if they don’t have holiday service? I would say get some holiday service out there. Try, as you mentioned earlier, a pilot.

Test it out. Test the waters. Put some service on Thanksgiving Day. Maybe it’s too late considering we’re recording this a week out from Thanksgiving. But maybe on New Year’s, right? Or a New Year’s Day.

New Year’s Eve, rather, if you were to extend your service. Maybe you typically end on a 9 p.m. hour. Well, extend it to midnight. Extend it to 1 a.m. and see what type of ridership you get. Maybe it’s not much at first, but I think that offering those additional bits of service shows your customers that you really care, that you’re in it to transport them.

You’re in it to help them. Again, this is a, you know, it’s a public service that agencies are offering. And I would like to think that 100% of the agencies out there are customer oriented, that they’re focused on ensuring what’s best for their communities.

So I would say at least try it out. That would be, you know, the, I think the major takeaway, if you don’t have it already. If you have it, make sure your, you know, your technology is up to date. Make sure you’re producing the best GTFS feed that you can.

And communicating via, you know, whatever mobile app you’re using, if it’s, you know, maybe the spot native app, or transit app, or move it, you know, any of those that are out there on the market, use them to your full advantage.

Try to use social media as well. You know, I think that that communication is key. And that, for me, sums up what agencies could do to be able to improve holiday service, just talk to your customers, you know, get out there, be that voice.

And listen. What do you think?

Yeah, I think that what you said is spot on and, you know, making sure that also we’re data driven when it comes to a, you know, when we’re selecting holidays to put service on and also the evaluating the performance of that service.

And one thing that I would ask agencies that maybe don’t run service during holidays is take a look at your list of holidays, right? Some agencies could have up to like 12 holidays that they don’t run any service on, maybe it’s only five days, three days out of the year.

But if you don’t run during a lot of the major holidays, I would start by looking at what’s the behavior during those days, right? You know, during Labor Day, Memorial Day, Martin Luther King, there’s a lot of businesses that are still running, a lot of people that are riding transit for employment or recreation or even, you know, shopping.

You know, you could shop with no problem Labor Day, Memorial Day, and a lot of these people that are riding transit, they’re expected to come to work. So I would start by looking at some of the holidays that are typically busy in terms of activity within the community and consider starting with service on those days.

In my experience, I’ve noticed Thanksgiving tends to be the holiday with the lease ridership. But again, there’s still people that are being transported. And, you know, the other piece is that you’re not, you should not look at this exclusively with the lens of ridership.

And I hope that the listeners out there think the same. If not, let us know. Let us know why you think that maybe conferences could do better or maybe there are areas.

to improve. For all the years, we’d like to hear you.

feedback. This was a great episode, Christian. It was a pleasure, as always, to talk to you. Of course. And we’ll catch you next time. There’s a lot of activity in the community. So let’s say it’s a holiday where almost everybody’s working.

There’s only a few government folks that get the holiday off and maybe the schools don’t run during that day. But all the other economic activity that is happening with the community is business as usual.

Those are good places to start in and realizing that if you’re not running service, then it’s a disservice to the community. Because those people that are working every day and then they don’t get that holiday off, they’re expected to get to work.

And if they’re transit-dependent, so what are they doing on those days? You’re pushing them to pay Uber and Lyft or to ask somebody for a ride. I mean, that’s the other part that we have to think about.

The people that are transit-dependent, they need transit almost every day of the year.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, that’s a great point, and I really love that you focused on the data-driven solution. Looking where most people are still going to be traveling regardless of it being a holiday or not, but in the end, you’re there to serve your community regardless of, is this going to give you an ROI on ridership?

I know in my experience at Lee Tran, when I was there, not sure how it is now, but we didn’t operate on six major holidays. When I got to Palm Tran, I was pleasantly surprised that we operated 365 days a year, which was great, but I know that that wasn’t always the case.

It was not. Yeah, could you explain that a little bit more? Because I’m really interested to know what that was like before I got there.

Yes. So, uh, PalmTrend didn’t operate service, I believe it was seven major holidays. Uh, you know, it was completely shut down. We would have people, you know, even though it was for several years, that we didn’t run on those days, we would still have people calling and trying to find out about the bus.

And then we would have to tell them, you know, no, we don’t run. Or, you know, they would not get anybody on the phone because even customer service would be shut down and they would just be upset because they’re waiting and then nobody’s answering.

And then it happens that there’s no service on that day. Um, so one of the ways that we got to 365 days was really asking our board and bringing, you know, bringing the, the fact that we were not running during those holidays, uh, to the different advisory boards and stakeholders and letting them know.

And, and one thing that we did was to take a look at our peers, uh, similar size agencies, uh, similar demographics, and then putting them back side by side. And what we discovered when we did that, that, that peer analysis, that kind of like benchmark was that, um, most of our peers run 365 days or at least run, uh, during most of those major holidays that were we, when we, uh, POMTRON was not running on.

So once we did that benchmark and we put all the agencies side by side and which ones run during the holidays and which ones doesn’t, and pretty much all the other peers were providing service, some level of service.

Sometimes it was just Sunday service, you know, very limited service. Uh, and then the fact that we were not providing any service at all. And we put that in front of officials when they looked at that, they were very impressed.

They said, wow, I didn’t know that, you know, all these other agencies are running when we’re not. Uh, and then they asked for a pilot. It was them that said, you know, we only showed the information.

We didn’t even ask to provide service during those holidays, but it was until we put that information in front of them that they said, well, maybe we should pilot it and try to try it out.

Yeah, that’s amazing. What a cool story that you’re able to present just the facts, right? It’s not saying this is good, this is bad. It’s, hey, this is what our competitors are, you know, competitors in the sense of this is what other transit agencies are doing.

Of course, you’re not really competing for those same riders for the most part. But this is what the agencies that are in our peer group are doing. And this is how we compare. I mean, that alone, if you were to look at 365 and oh, you’re operating, what did you say, seven holidays, right?

So 358 days a year, you know, that that shows that shows you quantitatively that maybe you’re missing out on something or maybe you could be doing better, right? I could be doing more like what my peers in the other part of the state are doing or the other part of the country.

So, man, this has been a really good conversation. I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly. I love talking about the planning side of the world. Now that I’m on the technology side, less so in planning, but this is what really gets me excited.

And of course, it’s the holiday season. So I’m already excited by that. A lot of good things to come for sure.

Yes. And one final thing, Levi, as we’re concluding this episode today, is to try out different service levels, right? Different holidays are going to need different levels of service. And sometimes you might, you know, the beauty about the holiday also is that you get a little bit of that wiggle room, like that’s just justification to like maybe on a weekday to run Sunday service, right?

Because it’s a holiday, it’s not a regular Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever day of the week is a day of the week, but then it’s a holiday. So sometimes, and again, I just ask for everybody to take a look at the kind of like the activity in the community during those days.

But, you know, one of my kind of like takeaways from that experience of adding service and assessing, measuring how effective it was, is that some of the holidays that were falling on a weekday that didn’t cause major disruption to the economic activity in the community.

And we operated regular weekday service on had a very similar ridership than a regular weekday. So pretty much justifying running service on that day, right? Like you run is a Monday Labor Day, and then you’re putting service in the ridership is very comparable to any other weekday.

It just tells you first that there’s a need and there’s a demand for it. And second that a lot of your captive riders and people that are dependent right and right in your system, they’re using it because they do need to get to places on that day as well.

So yeah, I think that that’s important to tailor it and then see that if you start on a weekday with weekday service, and then the ridership is quite low, well, you can change it to Saturday service and maybe to Sunday service where you allow still options to people to get around.

But then you’re tailoring to the mobility demand for that day. And lastly, is that it takes time to build up that ridership as well. Because if traditionally you were closer in a holiday, it takes education, right?

Letting your ridership know that now you’re running on that day, letting them know what level of service you’re running, so they can start planning their transportation on those days using your service.

And what I’ve seen is that, you know, year after year, the holiday ridership has been growing a as we are letting the community know that they can depend on us on those days. So that’s kind of like my last final takeaway is, you know, you have to measure it, you have to assess it, but you have to promote it as well.

If not, if people don’t know, then they won’t be using it.

Yeah, that’s the concept of induced demand right there. You put it out there, you build it, people kind of flock to it once they learned about it, once they receive that education, and then, you know, your ridership starts going up.

So I think that’s a great place to end it on Christian. I’m really glad that we had this conversation today and looking forward to the next one, to our listeners. We will see you next week on Monday.

As always, we’ll be there. Thanks again.

Thank you for listening. Appreciate it.