Integrating and Optimizing Public Transit for Events
For large events, the use of people-measurement brings of level of intelligence to crowd management that opens up opportunities to improve operations and fan experience. Not least of these is better, more intelligent integration with local public transit. This integration is of particular interest to me since I spent a good chunk of last year working with New Jersey Transit on a number of different flow analytics and people measurement fronts. Seeing how that work dovetailed with crowd intelligence work at large-scale events has been fascinating.
If people had to pick one aspect (maybe aside form cost) of the current fan experience that almost invariably sucks, parking would probably be at the top of the list. Not only does it add to the expense, it’s nearly always a stressful and unpleasant experience. And bookending an otherwise great day with bad experiences really sucks. If first and last impressions are the ones that matter most (and that’s typically the case), then parking is a serious problem.
More extensive use of public transit not only alleviates that problem for the people who aren’t parking, it makes life better for everyone who IS parking. Every fan shifted to public transit is a kind of double win from an experience perspective. Provided, of course, that the transit experience isn’t just a whole other set of problems.
Much of the work we’ve been doing on the transit side is designed to alleviate issues with that experience – especially for people who aren’t regular commuters, A lot of cities here in the U.S. are starting to think about World Cup next year – and events like the World Cup put a lot of stress on a transit system. Inexperienced riders need better signage, better ingress/egress options, and better tools for managing their trip. If you’ve been a tourist in NY since the MTA introduced OMNY, I’m guessing you LOVED it. I know I do. I wish San Francisco’s BART did the same. Likewise, if you’ve experienced the incredible confusion of a large transit center with all the stress of trying to get somewhere new on a timeline, you know how challenging it can be. People measurement can help with almost every aspect of this problem. It can help drive better signage and digital display. It can help with load balancing on platforms, It can help manage overflow conditions when you’re doing custom dispatch for special events. It can help you put your people in the places where they are most needed and can do the most good. And it can ensure that information about wait times, crowding, and queues is available in all the Apps people actually use.
For an event operator, though, all that stuff is MOSTLY a black box. You can’t improve the city subway or bus system. That being said, you CAN improve the ingress and egress experience at the event AND you can improve your integration with the transit authority. Both can make a huge difference to the success of transit operations and the experience that public transit gives to fans.
In cities where public transit really matters, the pattern of drop-offs has a huge impact on the entrance experience. For really large, special events (like World Cup), transit authorities are often adding a lot of additional system capacity on the key lines serving the event. Those systems will dump a ton of people into the entrance area in big bursts. This will often drive a unnecessarily terrible entrance experience – particularly if multiple trains are dropping people in overlapping waves. Whatever the pros and cons of parking, it tends to spread out arrival times in a way that public transit doesn’t.
For an event operator, there are strategies for handling this to make sure the transit experience is positive. First, in the pre-event stage work with the transit agency to schedule arrivals. You should simulate your max entrance capabilities and at peak times, try to make sure that you have enough space between arrivals to restore line balance. Second, make sure you maximize your peak entrance capacity. Most large events have multiple entrances, but they often get overwhelmed at one while others are holding their own. Sound operational planning and dynamic signage can help you steer fans with configurable routes to entrances that aren’t going to be slammed by public transit arrivals. Integrating queue data into public signage can further help by letting fans do their own load-balancing. Finally, planning the arrival area itself can be important. Good people measurement in that area can help you manage flows, but it can also help you test and build out strategies for engaging people pre-entrance to help smooth out those arrival bubbles.
The most important factor, obviously, is your throughput at the public transit entrances. It’s no mystery when those entrances are going to be maximally slammed, so you’re going to be fully staffed. Like Black Friday for retailers – once you’ve staffed and opened every station - ?there usually aren’t any other levers to pull. And at least in the short run, that's true. But ingressing strategies do change over time. A thoughtful experimentation strategy should always be in place – testing alternative techniques in line design and throughput processing. The one near certainty in analytics is that careful measurement and a willingness to test will generate improvement.
No one starts out on the summit of Everest. But by working both ends of the problem - better flow management in transit operations and better ingressing on the event-side, it's possible to get to peak customer experience.