Maintaining Transit Effectiveness Under Major Financial Constraints (2014)

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100 The following information was provided by Long Beach Transit in Long Beach, California: • From a service perspective, improvements in the run-cutting algorithm implemented in the 2008 upgrade of our HASTUS scheduling software have resulted in an increase in the number of straight runs available without any corresponding increase in costs. • Information from GFI ridership reports has allowed service to be reduced on poorly performing services in order to be added onto overcrowded services with no effect on ridership and no complaints. • AVL/GPS helps with on-time performance, more effi cient deployment of buses, and increased security for buses and persons onboard. • Our Interactive Voice Response system and mobile applications have resulted in reduced calls to our telephone information center, allowing staff to assume additional or other responsibilities. • Our swipe fare cards provide additional ridership data. From an information services perspective, for more than 6 years, Long Beach Transit has been leveraging new virtualization technologies in our data center. Virtualization has allowed us to sim- plify our infrastructure as we create a more dynamic and fl exible datacenter with proven server and datacenter virtualization solutions. Virtualization also helps us reduce capital expenses through server consolidation and reduces operating expenses through automation, while minimizing both planned and unplanned downtime. With automated operations management for the new dynamic virtual infrastructures, we can accelerate service delivery, improve operational effi ciency, ensure compli- ance, and reduce risk. • With the replacement schedule of 20 servers annually, the consolidation through virtualization has saved approximately $200,000 annually. • With automation, we’re able to “do more with less,” thus reducing the need for an additional full-time employee. • With the smaller environmental footprint through virtualization, we’re able to save on power consumption, air conditioning, etc., realizing a savings in power of an estimated $5,000 annually. The following information was provided by King County Metro in Seattle, Washington: • During the past 3 years we have completed some major technology projects that enable us to operate more effi ciently and provide more and better services to customers. These systems enable us to provide real-time information and other informa- tion for customers. We have seen an increase in operating costs as these systems shift from being capital projects to being operational. • We implemented a subscription service in 2009 that is an extremely effi cient method of reaching targeted audiences in a timely manner. The service has grown to more than 50,000 subscribers for transit topics. We’re currently sending about 2,500 e-mail and text alerts to subscribers per year. It is just a matter of drafting and sending the message, whether it’s about something happening right now or something that is planned for a future time that will impact transit service. While the exact impact on the budget is not known, for a relatively reasonable cost, GovDelivery handles the entire back-end, subscription manage- ment, routing, organization, RSS and other social media feeds. If we were trying to do all those things as well, it would cost signifi cantly more in terms of money and other resources. • Schedulers made use of more advanced scheduling techniques that were possible in our HASTUS scheduling software. This required additional training and tool “tuning,” but played a key role in trimming roughly $12 million in annual operating costs from our schedules without cutting service to customers. This effort was primarily executed in 2010 and 2011, but the skills/ tools added then continue to add benefi t in the way we schedule today. The following information was provided by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority in Washington, D.C.: The rollout of overtime analytic reports through Cognos business intelligence and performance management software is providing detailed visibility into how we are incurring overtime costs, enabling managers to identify opportunities and strategies for avoiding overtime. APPENDIX F Additional Responses to Survey Question #19: “How Has New Technology in Any Area of Your Agency Helped to Reduce Your Costs and/or Improve Your Effi ciency?”

101 WMATA implemented the Fleetwatch fl uid management system. Fleetwatch monitors fl uids used and mileage in both our revenue and service fl eets. It improves the preventive maintenance process by allowing us to better align our mileage-based pre- ventive maintenance. It also highlights abnormal fl uid usage, which allows us to catch problems early and avoid costly corrective maintenance actions. WMATA upgraded its Trapeze scheduling system. Trapeze creates all the rail and bus revenue service schedules. WMATA is now able to create more effi cient schedules that lead to fewer requirements for rail cars, buses, operators, or overtime. Conversely, the reductions can and have been applied to service improvements without the need for additional rail cars, buses, or operators. WMATA implemented the MicroFocus mainframe virtual environment. WMATA was able to migrate all remaining legacy systems from this environment to a virtual server environment. This allowed WMATA to return its mainframe, saving substantial costs in software licensing and hardware maintenance. WMATA is in the process of implementing an Electronic Records Management program. To date, this program has eliminated storage requirements for 2,500 physical bus operator fi les, converting them to electronic records, and is in the process of eliminating the paper forms associated with those fi les. Similar automation and fi le-scanning efforts are under way for Worker’s Compensation and Procurement. The program’s “de-duplication” program (in conjunction with the Data Center and Infrastructure group) will reduce duplicate fi les stored on shared drives by 70%, slowing the growth in storage costs. The Data Center and Infrastructure group has implemented a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure that has been used for inaugura- tion support and as a complement to HR staff, who teleworked during their space reconfi guration. This project is in pilot phase and is expected to be further deployed throughout the authority, enabling more effi cient management of the extensive desktop environment. The following information was provided by the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose, California: In the last 4 years, the VTA technology group has completed or embarked on a number of deployments and upgrades that had a positive impact on VTA and our customers. Project 1: Upgraded 149 ticket vending machines (TVMs) to extend the life of the TVMs, add smart card technology, and added credit card capability. Result: Refurbishing the TVMs helped to reduce the number of failures and reduced the amount of cash the TVM has to handle, thus reducing the number of trips to the TVMs. This project also provided the customer the ability to purchase regionwide fare products on the Clipper smart card. Project 2: Installed high-speed Wi-Fi access on the Light Rail and Express routes. Result: Survey data taken before and after the installation of Wi-Fi showed around an 8% improvement in ridership. We were also able to cover the 4G data cost by selling advertising on the splash page before allowing the user to start surfi ng the Internet. By installing GPS in the solution, we were able to leverage this installation for our Real-time Arrival solution, thus reducing the cost of installing ACS-Xerox IVR’s on our Light Rail vehicles and reducing the cost of the program by $240,000. Project 3: Upgrade of the business network and meet today’s standards for security and disaster recovery. Result: The VTA network solution was a single fl at network design with a mixture of CAT 3 and CAT 5 cabling. Due to the age and reliability of the system, we were seeing less than 99.0% network up time. This would have major impacts in worker productiv- ity across VTA, and the system was highly prone to virus attacks. The fi rewall, core switches, security appliances, two-thirds of the switches, and security software have already been upgraded, and we are achieving a 99.9% uptime. Wait time for large documents in the fi eld went from 10 to 15 seconds to less than 1 second. Project 4: Board offi ce paper to electronic board memo solution. Result: Technology deployed a web based application for the creation of board memos, tracking of committee and board work plans, generating committee and board meeting packets, and allowing for electronic distribution of said packets, thus reducing the number of printed documents distributed by VTA. Overall it has reduced the time it takes to generate a board document, standardized the look and feel of the documents, and helped to make sure the documents were ADA compliant. Project 5: Server upgrade by migration to blade server, and disaster recovery. Result: Technology upgraded 48% of the appli- cation servers from older Compaq server to newer quad core blade servers. Prior to this project, only one application was being

102 backed up in an alternate data center. We took this opportunity to make the new solution fault-tolerant and set up fail-over instances in our backup data center. We replaced the older tape drive backup system, thus eliminating the two off-shift IT staff dedicated to managing the older backup tape system. We improved server uptime from 98.4% to 99.9%, and now all critical applications are fault-tolerant. This project also upgraded the critical BDT servers used by Operations to dispatch vehicles. Upgrading the servers, operating system (OS), and database had a signifi cant impact in system performance. The system is now fault-tolerant and no longer limits the number of user log-ins owing to server limitations. Project 6: Copier, printer, and copy center replacement program. Result: VTA had a very old and poorly maintained 65 copier solution managed by one department, a copy center with 20-year old equipment, and more than 600 network or offi ce printers. All printing equipment was brought under Technology, and a new printing strategy was developed. Multifunction devices (MFDs) were leased and installed on the VTA network to replace the 65 stand-alone copiers and over half of the network printers. VTA saved more than $500,000 by eliminating the older printers scheduled for replacement. Cost per print is one-third on the new MFDs versus the older printers, or roughly $120,000 per year savings. Service was greatly improved and downtime on the MFDs has been better now that all of the MFDs are under a single contract and managed by the Technology help desk. New copy center equipment was leased and the old equipment sold for parts. Maintenance and support on the older equipment exceeded $210,000 per year and the lease on the new equipment is under $100,000 per year. The cost per copy is 35% less, and the Data Center can turn a job in half the production time because of the reduced set-up time and incremental speed of the equipment. Project 7: Upgrade all of our business and construction applications to the latest release. Result: Technology was 3 to 8 years behind on upgrading to the new releases of software that we had the rights to upgrade, and in some cases had customized the core application, which kept us from deploying patches. Due to this situation, known bugs in the software were not fi xed, and new capa- bilities in the newer releases were missed opportunities. This situation also limited our ability to upgrade the server OS and the desktop OS. We are now running the current release on more than 90% of our applications, eliminated almost all of the customiza- tions, and have upgrades already in process on the fi nal 10%. This will make upgrading the applications easier and quicker in the future, has made the solution more stable, and has improved the functionality. Project 8: Upgrade the VTA portal, consolidate document management systems, and improve online information access to VTA staff. Result: VTA has been a very paper-intensive company, and we store multiple copies of the same document in multiple loca- tions and systems. A strategy and three projects were developed to move VTA to a more electronic environment while improving our record retention policy, and e-discovery capability. To date VTA has eliminated the use of Kovis ($50,000 per year cost), which was a redundant EDMS system. We are in the process of deploying a new SharePoint internal portal that will allow us to eliminate the use of Share fi les, and supports workfl ow of Certifi ed Electronic Digital Signatures and interactive electronic forms. Once com- pleted this year, we’ll eliminate the Open Text eDocs application support ($130,000 per year) and the multiple Share fi le systems. In the next 2 years we’ll move paper documents and records into SharePoint’s record center, eliminating duplicate copies of the same documents, thus making e-discovery and record destruction easier and more effi cient. The following information was provided by Community Transit in Snohomish County, Washington: Smart card (ORCA) and CAD/AVL/APC system. Improved data on system performance, revenue generation, and opportunities to control costs and improve effi ciency of both paratransit and fi xed-route systems. AVL/APC systems allow us to reduce the cost of collecting data in the fi eld. Smart card (ORCA) and off-board ticket machines on BRT. These systems speed passenger boarding time, which reduces dwell time at stops and makes for more effi cient operation. Trapeze and APTS CAD/AVL. Improved productivity of paratransit service through improved scheduling, automation of driver manifests, and active dispatching. Transit technologies make Swift work better. ORCA smart card readers at each station make paying the fare fast and easy. Signal priority throughout the corridor can provide a shortened red light or an extended green light to keep Swift moving quickly. Automated stop announcements clearly indicate upcoming stations. Automatic vehicle locating systems provide for consistent bus spacing on the corridor. Automated passenger counters track ridership at each station. Queue jumps are another element of on-street technology that helps buses maintain speed and reliability. Swift buses now get a head start with a queue jump light. All of these technologies contribute to faster running, times allowing us to carry more people per service hour.

103 Business intelligence. The agency is just now implementing this new data analysis technology that will greatly assist in retrieving large amounts of data created primarily by the APTS, ORCA, and Trapeze OPS systems and allow for intuitive data visualization and easy ad hoc/decision support reporting, including the creation of dashboards. The Trapeze OPS Sign-in Terminal in Transportation has improved effi ciencies in the window dispatchers’ work. They no longer spend their time monitoring the sign-in sheet and can focus on covering work and other duties. Online reporting for our 360 vanpool groups provides time savings and better accuracy on reports for our vanpool fl eet coordina- tors. The time savings allow the coordinators to concentrate on other necessary duties. In Marketing, Facebook has allowed two-way communication with customers to discuss issues and solutions to transit opera- tions and other questions. Our video programs have allowed us to reach a larger audience and outreach our services. They also save on print material costs. WebEx has allowed us to communicate with our employer audience and helps us save money in travel and the cost of fi nding a good location. Ning allows us to provide information electronically and allows our customers to share ideas electronically and instantaneously. FlickR allows us to photo share with other staff in the agency. This saves staff time by having all photo resources in one easy-to-access location.