Today marks one year until the FIFA Men’s World Cup 26™ kicks off across the US, Canada, and Mexico—the largest sporting event in history, featuring 48 national teams playing 104 matches in 16 cities over 38 days.

For transit agencies in host cities, this event brings both a massive challenge and a unique opportunity: to welcome visitors with a positive transit experience and keep their cities moving. In order to be successful, these agencies will need to plan for a surge of new riders, operate detours and temporary routes, and—most critically—deliver accurate and reliable information to both event-goers and everyday commuters.

At Swiftly, we’re proud to support 9 of the 11 US World Cup host cities with modern transit tools and accurate, reliable, and accessible data.

Every community faces its own “World Cup moment”—whether it’s an evening concert in Cleveland, a football game in Texas, a July 4th parade in Denver, or a county fair in Minnesota. What qualifies as a “large event” is relative—but the need for agile, rider-centered communication during them is universal.

How can transit agencies rise to this challenge?

Swiftly recently brought together leaders from LA Metro, Philadelphia’s SEPTA, and the RTC of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas to share their best practices for agencies hosting large events.

“Here in Las Vegas we have only 14 days out of the year when we do not have some sort of event or activity going on,” said Sabrina Glenn, Senior Director of Transit at the RTC of Southern Nevada. “It is important that we share information in an easy, understandable way, for not just our residents who are using our services every day, but for those individuals that are coming in for their weekend trip. How we communicate out to the public is really important to make things easy and seamless for our riders."

You can watch the webinar recording here, or read on for insights on how transit agencies of all sizes can prepare for community-wide events.

Request a meeting with our team, and one of our transit data experts will walk you through how Swiftly helps agencies improve real-time passenger information through large events and daily operations.

"We have really high profile events coming up with the World Cup and the Olympics. We really want the customer experience to be a focus on the same level as operations. We're working on improving the confidence of riders with the information that we give them.”

—Nina Kin, Digital Experience Team Tech Lead, LA Metro

1. Real-time information is most critical when the spotlight is brightest

During large events, a positive rider experience can earn praise from visitors and convert locals taking transit for the first time into regular riders.

In these moments, accurate and reliable real-time information becomes mission-critical.

Riders today expect fast, accurate, and contextual information, whether they’re navigating to a major event like a parade, marathon, or championship game—or just catching the bus to work.

“People have the expectation that they will know when, where, and why things are happening very quickly at the touch of their finger, says Glenn of the RTC of Southern Nevada. “We do a lot to not only promote and communicate in advance of our large-scale events, but also communicate as they are occurring and wrapping up."

Agencies that have invested in technology and staff workflows to improve real-time passenger information excel in the following areas.

Accurate passenger predictions

Real-time updates are no longer a nice-to-have but a foundational element of rider trust. Riders expect up-to-the-minute arrival predictions. A missed bus due to an early prediction can be enough to push a frustrated rider to another transportation method.

Panelists on our webinar all spoke to the improvements in prediction accuracy their agencies have seen through a variety of methods, including integrating multiple sources of AVL data and Swiftly’s continually improving prediction algorithms. For example, SEPTA improved prediction accuracy by 26% across 31 million annual passenger trips, and the RTC of Southern Nevada reduced “miss-the-bus” predictions by 70%!

Disruption-aware real-time passenger information

Large events disrupt normal operations with street closures, added service, moved stops, and more. Every rider—event goers or regular commuters—must navigate unfamiliar services.

In these moments, disruption-aware real-time information isn’t just helpful; it’s essential.

Both LA Metro and the RTC of Southern Nevada communicate over 1,000 detours every month with riders through Swiftly’s Service Adjustments—indicating both the volume of events in these cities and the dedication of agency teams to keeping riders informed.

SEPTA has also invested in disruption-aware real-time predictions, during large events and everyday service.

“Our buses all have Swiftly real time data which works really well for our customers. But we were having a little trouble, like many transit agencies, with the issue of ghost buses and cancellations not making it out to riders in a timely fashion,” said Katie Monroe, Project Manager for Service Disruption Communications at SEPTA. “We went from a paper form that was being scanned and circulated to an internally created digital place for our dispatchers to enter the missed trips. Those cancellations pipe directly into the Swiftly data and go out to our own modern app and website, but also all the various interfaces and apps that people might choose.”

Proactive rider communications

Riders want to know when, where, and why adjustments to service are happening. Agencies can instill confidence in riders by providing additional context on disruptions, such as the reason for an adjustment, affected lines, and how long the adjustment will last.

The RTC of Southern Nevada and LA Metro engage riders proactively by using Swiftly’s Rider Alerts to send out alerts through their GTFS-rt feeds. The team at the RTC of Southern Nevada sends out nearly 2,000 rider alerts every month to offer more information on how their busy events calendar is impacting service.

Swiftly’s Service Adjustments now supports canceling trips in advance, streamlining dispatchers’ workflows and keeping riders, staff, and operators informed.

2. Meeting riders where they are

Accessibility of information is just as important as accuracy.

As advocates for riders, our panelists discussed the importance of communicating with passengers on the channels they currently use or have access to: Google Maps, Transit, SMS, signage, and more. The LA Metro team posts visual maps of detours from Swiftly’s Service Adjustments directly on X so riders can get information on closed stops and detour routes directly on social media.

“One focus that we have is improving the quality of the data that we release in general. That data is going to go into our Metro branded app, but it’s also going into every app out there,” said Kin. “Riders will benefit, no matter what app they choose to use. We know not everyone's going to want to choose a single app, and we really want to improve that quality of data everywhere.”

Dispatchers and customer service representatives can choose to add an auto-generated rider alert directly after creating a service adjustment, streamlining their workflow and ensuring riders receive proactive communications.

3. Serving both event spectators and everyday commuters

A recurring theme was the need to serve both event-goers and everyday commuters simultaneously. Event-goers—whether a regular transit rider, a non-frequent rider taking transit to avoid traffic and parking, or an international visitor—will face unfamiliar routes and shuttles. While regular commuters simply trying to get to work or home will have their rides affected by detours and outer disruptions. Agencies need to employ communication strategies that account for the needs of these two different audiences during major events.

For example, the RTC of Southern Nevada encourages locals to sign up for Transit. As a result, over 95,000 riders are able to take advantage of all the features available through the agency’s use of Transit Royale. The RTC of Southern Nevada also sent out over two million text messages through their SMS service powered by Swiftly data through the first half of the year.

4. Prioritizing customer experience with internal stakeholders

Agencies are making a deliberate shift to prioritize the customer experience (CX), elevating CX to the leadership level alongside planning, operations, and IT.

Integrating CX with operations and planning helps agencies collaborate on decisions that impact the rider experience. For example, operations teams’ desire to maintain flexibility during the planning process can be at odds with the customer experience team’s priority to communicate plans with riders. Leadership from these two teams should understand these trade-offs for effective decision-making.

“Many transit agencies are really bringing customer experience to the forefront and thinking deeply about how that gets prioritized,” said Monroe of SEPTA. “Nothing that we do on customer experience works unless we do it in close partnership with operations. It’s important to be an advocate as early as possible so that the rider has a voice at the table as you're planning.”

5. Data standards are transformative

Transit data standards are the key to meeting passengers’ expectations for disruption-aware real-time information. It is no surprise that the agencies managing transit for some of the largest events in the world are also at the forefront of adopting the latest innovations in data standards.

GTFS and GTFS-realtime enable a “publish once, appear everywhere” model and allow agencies to scale communications, ensure consistency, and future-proof their platforms. Kin is on the board of Mobility Data, the organization overseeing these standards, and shared how data standards are critical to her team’s approach to passenger information.

“Having these standards and APIs really makes all of this information communication possible to riders,” said Kin. “No matter which platform they choose to use, we as an agency just have to publish that once.

Recent extensions like GTFS Trip-Modifications expands this approach to publishing detours. The RTC of Southern Nevada was one of the first agencies in the nation to take advantage of the ability to visually display detour routes, and this information goes out to over 95,000 local Transit users through their use of Swiftly’s Service Adjustments and Transit Royale.

6. It’s a marathon, not a sprint

Large events don’t just impact service on the day or week of the event. They often involve weeks or months of disruptions as event hosts construct infrastructure improvements and amenities for attendees and participants.

Panelists shared that prolonged construction and detours can even be a greater challenge than the event itself. To mitigate the impacts of events on local riders, transit agencies must prepare for the preparation—which could mean investing in communication tools and processes many months or even more than a year before a large event.

In fact, the team at the RTC of Southern Nevada was so thorough with their planning for the annual F1 week that they created new schedules for routes impacted by the event. As a result, they were able to improve on-time performance on affected routes by 16.6% from 2023 to 2024, keeping the community moving during the event.

“When Formula One was first coming, all we did was talk about race week. But we ended up with three months of detours and changes,” said Glenn. “It’s really important to understand the impacts leading up to a special event. When are we going to close the roadways? Are they building a new facility? All of these things should be discussed in advance to make sure that you have a plan on how to communicate those impacts to riders.”

7. Agencies are building for the future—not just the next event

Major events are helping agencies build long-term infrastructure, processes, and culture that will benefit all riders—not just those attending marquee events. Investments in communicating with passengers during large events also apply to smaller planned and unplanned disruptions that agencies face, whether that’s daily construction, a weekly farmer’s market, or a once-in-a-decade snowstorm.

To close out, Kin mentioned that her team frames investments in customer communications during large events as durable long-term improvements: “We're thinking about how we can invest in improved processes and technologies so that they become embedded and benefit our regular riders now and into the future.”