OneBusAway - Issue reporting - Challenges and Improvements

Preview:

Citation preview

Center for Urban Transportation Research | University of South Florida

Improving Issue Reporting in OneBusAway

Sean J. Barbeau, Ph.D.

Challenges

● Florida has highest bike/pedestrian fatality rate per capita in the nation - two straight years

● Need to identify ways to make multimodal travel safer● Issues that affect travel are cross-jurisdictional

o Difficult for the public to understand where an infrastructure issue (street, light, sidewalk, bench, bikelane, etc.) should be reported

o Can include city, county, FDOT, transit agencies● How can we improve issue reporting from the public

to government?

OneBusAway

• Many bike/ped travelers use transit• We can capture some feedback on potential

improvements from OneBusAway users• We can also improve the current OneBusAway

feedback process:1. Stop Problem Reporting – Goes to OBA Server2. Trip Problem Reporting – Goes to OBA Server3. Contact Us email – Goes to regional email

address

4

CURRENT ONEBUSAWAY ISSUE REPORTING PROCESS

How do user’s currently send feedback?

5

OBA Feedback

• Currently three primary ways to send feedback:1. Stop Problem Reporting – Goes to OBA Server2. Trip Problem Reporting – Goes to OBA Server3. Contact Us email – Goes to regional email

address

6

1. Stop Problem Reporting

7

1. Stop Problem Reporting

8

1. Stop Problem Reporting

9

2. Trip Problem Reporting

10

2. Trip Problem Reporting

11

2. Trip Problem Reporting

12

2. Trip Problem Reporting

13

Viewing Stop and Trip Problem Reports

• Accessed via the regional OBA website

14

3. Contact Us email

15

3. Contact Us email

16

3. Contact Us email

onebusaway@gohart.org

• Goes to the regional OBA contact email

• Can include free text about anything

17

OneBusAway Feedback Challenges

• Trip and stop problem report viewing interfaces are hidden behind main admin account – tiered access not possible– Also, no way to communicate back to user

• Contact Us emails can be a variety of different problems, which may be owned by different agencies/departments

• Difficult to triage/manage issue reports via these channels

18

IMPROVING ONEBUSAWAY FEEDBACK

How can we improve the current process?

19

How can we improve feedback process?• We want to make the feedback channels clearer to users

– Direct them to the right channel, based on their type of feedback

• We want to be able to reply to user reports• Strategy - examine other tools designed for

triaging/management issue reports– Open311.org standard

• Vendors such as SeeClickFix and PublicStuff• Open-source software solutions

• Following are screenshots of how we plan to revise the OneBusAway mobile app process

20

OneBusAway Improvements

21

Customer Service feedback

• Shows list of agencies and phone/email/web contact for each (if available)

• Requires fields in GTFS agency.txt for each agency – agency_phone, agency_email (not currently in GTFS spec), agency_url

Hillsborough Area Regional Transit

Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority

22

Stop/Trip problem reports

• Submit to Open311 backend if available, otherwise submit to OBA

• Will default to selected issue type

• Allows user to pick stop/location of problem

Arrival Time Issue

• Bus never came• Bus came earlier

than predicted• Bus came later

than predicted• …

What problem did you see?

23

App feedback

android-app@onebusaway.org

My location problems, no stops on map, etc.

• App feedback goes to app developers

24

Ideas for new features

My location problems, no stops on map, etc.

• Ideas for new features goes to OneBusAway Ideascale site - http://onebusaway.ideascale.com/

• Users can vote on ideas

25

TAMPA PILOTHow we plan to deploy this in Tampa

Pinellas County & City of St. Pete

• Using SeeClickFix.com

SeeClickFix features• Branded mobile apps• Allows users to simply report a problem, complete with

image and location• Internally directs the report to proper jurisdiction• Pinellas County / City of St. Pete define the issue

categories, follow-up questions, and jurisdictional boundaries

• Pinellas County / City of St. Pete can triage issues and close issues when they are resolved

• “Facebook” style comments, citizens can “upvote” issues• Management reports can be run

Pinellas County• Contacts:– Martin Rose, CIO– Michael Roiland, Web Manager

• Started as pilot ($40 per month) in 2011• City of St. Pete began participating• In June 2014, signed up for enterprise license (approx.

$12k per year) for branded apps, unlimited internal users, all issue management and reporting tools

• Willing to provide PSTA a user under their account to monitor activity related to transit

Tampa Pilot

• We’re modifying OneBusAway to submit issues via the Open311 standard– Android app will serve as pilot

• In Tampa, pilot will submit issues to SeeClickFix.com (Open311-compliant)

• PSTA, FDOT, and HART plan to participate– HART SeeClickFix license TBD

• Estimated to start late 2015

31

Thanks!

Sean J. Barbeau, Ph.D.barbeau@cutr.usf.edu813.974.7208

Principal Mobile Software Architect for R&DCenter for Urban Transportation ResearchUniversity of South Florida

Recommended