Room: Mississauga AB
Sponsor(s)
Session Description
Quality Data, Better Journeys: Enhancing Transit Customer Experience
Stream: Operations Stream
Moderator:
1. Transforming the Passenger Experience with Quality Data (ETA Completeness)
Speaker: Hazel Scher – Swiftly
Transit agencies are under pressure to deliver reliable service and improve the rider experience, but poor data quality quietly undermines both goals. In this session, we’ll break down transit data pitfalls and success stories across three critical dimensions: accuracy, completeness, and accessibility. Specifically, a transit data expert will share a new industry methodology to benchmark “ETA Completeness,” giving agencies a new objective lens through which to evaluate the quality of passenger information. Attend to hear real-world examples from agencies tackling data quality issues head-on — from eliminating “ghost buses” to ensuring passenger information in trip-planning apps matches service on the streets.
2. Fostering a Culture of Data Excellence – A Guelph Transit Casestudy
Speaker: Sara Khatib, Transit App and Laura Catalano-Bragues, Guelph Transit
Excellent schedule and real-time data are no longer nice-to-have — they are an essential component of building and retaining rider trust. When agencies foster a culture of data excellence, they join their teams with a common goal: ensuring riders have all the information they need to build public transit into their daily lives. This panel will be a collection of local public transit agencies leading in the data space. These agencies are at the forefront of GTFS development and display – they generate up-to-date, helpful information for riders that can also be parsed by third party rider information apps, like Transit.
Speaker(s) / Presenter(s)
Hazel Scher – Strategic Account Executive, Swiftly
Bio:
Hazel spent the first decade of her career as a transit planner with NelsonNygaard Consulting Associates, helping agencies across North America with transit service planning, BRT corridor planning, and long-range transit visions. During that time she saw planning efforts provide a roadmap for transformative change in local transit systems, but often with a very long timeline. In her five years at Swiftly, Hazel has focused on bringing more immediate measurable impact to the day-to-day rider experience through helping transit agencies identify and resolve problems with real-time data accuracy and data completeness that negatively impact the customer journey. Hazel is currently leading a 9-month pilot project focused on passenger information with TransLink in Vancouver, BC.
Bio: Sara is a Civil Engineer, Urban Planner, and researcher interested in cities (quite obviously) and everything that makes them run. Currently using her data-wrangling skills to help a great team build an app that helps us move around our cities #sustainably and #stress-free.
Bio:
Enthusiastic and results-driven professional with a passion for transit network design planning and operating systems. Adept in data analytics, route optimizations, system plan development, sustainable transportation planning and technology systems planning.
Laura brings a collaborative approach to problem-solving and a commitment to continuous improvement. Eager to contribute her expertise in transit development and systems to drive success and growth.
