Disruptions can throw a wrench into transit agency operations, sending staff scrambling and leaving riders in the dark.

But transit agencies can avoid being caught off guard. We know that poor weather and holiday parades arrive in winter, construction and street festivals dot the calendar in the summer, and big sporting events or concerts occur year-round. Agencies can mitigate the impact of disruptions by preparing for both planned and unplanned (but not unexpected) scenarios.

As we head into the holiday season, we wanted to share guidance on how agencies can “weather the storm” of winter flurries and holiday street closures.

Transit agencies today have more tools than ever before to communicate disruptions across the operations center, staff in the field, operators, and passengers. At Swiftly, we have experience working with leading agencies to manage service through planned and unplanned events, including multiple Super Bowls, Texas’ unlikely ice storms, and severe operator shortages. And drawing on my decade of experience in transit operations, I’ve seen firsthand how effective tools can make a real difference for agency staff and riders alike when things don’t go according to plan.

Read on for our Transit Disruption Checklist for agencies to keep operations running as smoothly as possible.

Interested in learning how agencies like CapMetro, OCTA, and MBTA are managing disruptions today? Request a meeting with our team to learn more about tools to manage and communicate service changes.

Preparing months ahead

✔ Create a plan

It’s critical to prioritize preparation for disruptions, whether for planned events, predictable scenarios like weather, or the unknown. Every agency should have internal documentation on the information that riders, customer service staff, and operations teams need to know during service disruptions.

The best plans proactively call out specific routes or services for riders, sharing agency knowledge on which streets and roads are more challenging to safely serve during severe winter weather—such as those plowed last or prone to icing earlier than others.

✔ Invest in detour-aware real-time passenger information

Accurate real-time passenger information is more important than ever when riders are waiting at a stop with five inches of snow on the ground. Every minute that passengers wait for a bus that isn’t coming can make planning for an alternative way home even more difficult.

The most successful agencies have tools to make planned and ad hoc changes to service—and communicate these changes—to staff, operators, and riders. This includes the ability to easily cancel trips and draw detours. For example, giving staff the tools to cancel a block or close a stop with a few clicks can help keep riders and internal teams informed in real-time.

Agencies should also ensure that arrival predictions are detour-aware, meaning stops skipped by a detour should not display upcoming arrival times for riders. The new Trip-Modifications data standard even allows riders to see detours on a map in trip-planning applications.

During a past snow storm, I experienced multiple operators calling in to say a specific stretch of a route had not been plowed yet. My team quickly created a detour, automatically notifying riders and allowing them to walk a few blocks to catch the bus rather than waiting in the snow for a bus that would not come.

Swiftly’s Onboard App now includes turn-by-turn navigation for operators, including for detours. Operations staff can enter detours through the Swiftly dashboard, and operators will automatically receive updated directions inclusive of the detour over the internet and directly on the tablet.

✔ Keep staff on the same page with consistent data

Critically, up-to-date detour information should always be consistent for staff, operators, and riders on the channels that they rely on. Modifying service is always a challenge, but relying on a single, shared data source minimizes the extra coordination necessary between customer service teams, dispatch, and the OCC. Instead of calling back and forth to check on real-time conditions, teams can use the time saved on other pressing tasks.

Tracking detours consistently will also ensure that historical data captures system performance through disruptions. When the dust settles, the agency can review on-time performance and run-times data to understand the impact of disruptions and better plan for the future.

✔ Provide staff with efficient tools

Every second counts when staff are flooded with calls. Customer service and operations center staff will face high-stakes, time-sensitive inquiries from operators, staff in the field, and riders. Through efficient dashboards, they should have solutions at their fingertips. As a rule of thumb, staff should be able to answer a “Where’s my bus?” call within 30 seconds.

Swiftly’s global search feature in Live Operations allows agency staff to filter by data type including vehicle, operator, run, block, and stop. With this tool, customer service representatives can efficiently and accurately communicate with riders. For example, a customer service representative can immediately search a stop code and precisely locate a rider in seconds to quickly respond to their inquiry when time is of the essence.

✔ Enable access from anywhere

During severe weather, enabling staff to access critical tools from home can help ensure safety, efficiency, and adequate staffing during otherwise disruptive situations. Cloud-native solutions can support access from any internet-connected device, including mobile devices, maintaining access to critical tools from home or even on tablets in the field.

“Swiftly was a lifesaver for us during the storm. We could cancel service easily, and folks at home could see the updated vehicle locations with just a simple internet connection.”

—Dottie Watkins, Chief Executive Officer, CapMetro

Continue reading for best practices in the days ahead of, and during, an event.

Interested in learning more about tools to proactively manage disruptions while keeping staff and riders informed? Request a meeting with a member of our team to learn how agencies are using Swiftly to prepare for everything from winter storms to the Super Bowl!

Preparing days ahead

✔ Develop playbooks for probable scenarios

The game plan should not be a blank slate, even if you’re unsure of the exact outcome of weather or another unpredictable scenario. Teams should understand weather forecasts, identify streets that are most likely to be closed or stay open, and use any advanced information to plan different possible responses.

It can be helpful to think in terms of phases and define potential responses based on weather severity or event outcomes. For example, WMATA’s Bus Snow Service Plan clearly outlines to riders which routes are likely to be suspended at different levels of snowfall, providing riders with guidelines like, “If it snows six inches or more, we will plan to stop running this route for the evening.”

✔ Send out rider alerts

Whether there’s a menacing forecast or a planned event, marketing or customer service teams should proactively notify riders of potential schedule changes with rider alerts. Agencies should make sure alerts go out on popular third-party trip-planning applications as well as agency-owned channels.

✔ Ensure sufficient staffing and equipment

This is a time to have all hands on deck! Extraboard or standby operators can assist with driver switchouts or clean-up runs.

Make sure supervisor cars are ready with relevant equipment such as ice scrapers, bags of salt, and shovels. This toolkit helps supervisors avoid getting stuck, especially when assessing locations for potential service suspensions, and helps them lend a hand to operators in a pinch!

On the maintenance side, regularly checking antifreeze levels and conducting frequent fluid checks are crucial. If your agency uses block heaters, these are the most important nights to double check they are plugged in! And of course, ensuring major boarding locations, shelters, and facilities are properly salted is essential for safety. Even for stops that are maintained by local or state entities, coordinating to ensure they are treated appropriately makes a massive difference to the riders and operators that need to get on and off vehicles throughout the day.

Managing service during an event

✔ Keep in constant communication

Coordination from the streets to the operations center up to leadership is essential.

Road operations should have consistent communication with dispatch, communicating proactively about road conditions and route detours. In turn, leadership must communicate major service decisions with staff.

It’s also important to rely on your emergency plans and have clear expectations for ownership, timelines, and decision-making. Knowing who is responsible for communicating and when ensures there are no assumptions or missed links in the chain of communication.

✔ Monitor service and proactively intervene

In the past, I’ve worked with operations staff to closely monitor trips in real-time to proactively identify disruptions in the system.

For example, Operations Control can monitor trips running significantly behind schedule, maintaining a bird’s-eye view of on-time performance across the system. This allows them to proactively flag excessively delayed vehicles and coordinate with road operations or route supervision to investigate further.

Using recorded location data, they can quickly pinpoint specific stops or turns where vehicles are encountering issues and communicate this information to staff in the field. Armed with this information, supervisors can assess and recommend detours or service reductions, ensuring other operators are rerouted safely and service impacts are communicated efficiently to passengers.

✔ Create and update detours based on conditions

Agency staff should be on hand to implement and adjust existing detours based on road conditions. In the past, we’ve seen agencies make adjustments to thousands of trips through a single storm!

Empowering staff to manage disruptions with confidence

Transit agencies deal with the unexpected on a daily basis. But investments in accurate data and efficient tools made ahead of time can be the difference between confusion and confidence for staff and riders in the face of adversity.

Take a moment to evaluate your agency’s disruption-management tools to make sure your staff are empowered to deliver consistent, reliable communication. Reach out to connect with us and learn more.