Driving a route correctly is the foundation of transit service delivery. When bus operators navigate with confidence, they can focus on staying on time and providing an excellent passenger experience. Conversely, operator uncertainty or missed turns create inconvenient, uncomfortable, and even dangerous situations.

Yet navigation tools for bus operators have lagged behind the modern navigation experience that has become ubiquitous for car drivers.

The vast majority of bus operators do not have access to navigation software, relying instead on paper books to learn new routes and even hand-written instructions in the event of a detour.

Some operators have navigation functionality through their Mobile Data Terminal, but all too often these systems have a 2000's-era UI, use outdated base maps with incorrect directions, or aren't aware that buses drive differently than cars.

Swiftly is bringing modern, smartphone-style navigation to transit operators

The new navigation feature in Onboard App offers smartphone-style visual and audio turn-by-turn directions in a familiar tablet interface.

With a modern interface typical of leading app-based navigation systems, Onboard App makes it easy for operators to stay on route and on schedule. Critically, the underlying navigation information is based on open data standards and automatically updates with new route shapes, detours, and transit-specific directions.

Navigation in Onboard App unlocks benefits for the critical elements of service delivery as well as broader transit agency goals:

• Prevent off-route vehicles, improving on-time performance and safety
• Manage detours seamlessly with detour-aware navigation directions
• Provide a modern navigation experience to help train and retain operators

With Navigation in Onboard App, transit agencies can provide operators with a modern tool to do their best work, delivering service while staying on route and on time.

"Giving our staff high-quality technology is one way we help them give riders high-quality service,” says Ashli Molina, Deputy Director of Bus Technology at the MBTA in Boston. “Swiftly provides a safe and easy-to-use interface for our bus operators to get navigation support, and they work seamlessly with our modern open data architecture.”

Best-in-class data for reliable navigation

Swiftly’s transit data platform has been built from the ground up around open data standards and APIs, ensuring transit agencies can unlock the full value of their own data. Onboard App extends this approach to navigation with the first-ever onboard navigation tool based on open data standards.

First, let’s explain the tangible benefits of open data standards for transit navigation.

Most transit technology locks up your route and schedule information in a proprietary database. Even if your MDT does offer navigation, it takes numerous manual steps to get route updates to the MDT, which can take months. For agencies implementing network redesigns this can leave MDTs obsolete for months or even years. Agencies are left with an entirely new dataset to maintain, creating duplicative work for agency staff and yet another dependency on technology vendors.

Instead, Swiftly designed Navigation in Onboard App around the GTFS data standard.

Leveraging the GTFS data standard

Navigation in Onboard App consumes route shape data from an agency’s existing GTFS file. The same GTFS file you’re already maintaining for passenger information apps and historical performance analysis can now power navigation for your operators.

 “We streamlined our entire architecture so we could just focus on having good GTFS data,” says Cole McCarren, Assistant General Manager of RTA of Central Maryland. “The open data approach saves agencies a whole lot of time because they don’t have to worry about keeping a dozen different databases up to date.”

Other navigation providers may be able to conduct a one-time import of GTFS data but Swiftly picks up your latest GTFS as soon as it’s available, so route changes flow seamlessly to operators using navigation, riders using rider apps, and agency staff using historical data reports.

Swiftly has also turned to the open data community for the geographical data underlying the turn-by-turn directions that Navigation in Onboard App provides.

Using OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap is the global standard for enterprise-grade navigation data. Critically, this dataset allows for transit restrictions, ensuring safe and efficient navigation by preventing buses from driving on unsuitable streets.

Generating good directions requires an accurate map of the road network. No geographical dataset is perfect, especially as construction changes the shape of the road network in your service area. OpenStreetMap is continuously updated by hundreds of organizations and individuals around the world, so overlaying accurate GTFS on accurate OpenStreetMap data results in correct turn-by-turn directions for operators. Swiftly picks up changes to OpenStreetMap just like GTFS: seamlessly, over the air, and with zero manual steps.

Accurate, accessible, consistent data is at the heart of Swiftly’s platform. Extending this approach to onboard navigation means delivering better service.

Prevent wrong turns and improve service performance

Wrong turns and off-route vehicles hurt an agency’s on-time performance, and they can create a “ghost bus” experience for riders if the vehicle misses stops. Furthermore, off-route vehicles impact more than just service reliability. Routes are carefully designed around streets that can handle transit vehicles, and ending up on a too-small street, a dead end, or a low overpass is dangerous.

Addressing wrong turns is a valuable low-hanging fruit for agencies to improve service performance metrics and eliminate stressful incidents for operations staff and operators.

Navigation in Onboard App helps prevent off-route vehicles with a user-friendly interface and accurate navigation data. We’ve received incredibly positive feedback so far that Onboard App’s modern interface simplifies navigation for operators.

“We hit ‘Map’ and boom, it looked like Google Maps,” says Ryan Mayers, Planning and Special Projects Manager at RTA Maryland. “It was a very familiar interface. It looks beautiful. So the reaction I'm getting from the operator is, ‘Oh, this is amazing.’”

Seamless detour management

Transit agencies struggle to plan, execute, and communicate detours, especially unplanned ones. Agency staff work hard to convey detour instructions to operators, but the channels available for those instructions—paper, radio calls, and MDT text messages—are not suited to the task. This can leave operators scratching their heads, radioing for navigation help, or making wrong turns.

Swiftly has previously unveiled new solutions in the industry that transform the detour experience for riders and agency staff. Now, with Navigation in Onboard App, we’re extending this seamless detour management solution to operators.

When a dispatcher enters a detour into Swiftly, turn-by-turn instructions in Onboard App are immediately updated to reflect the detour. This saves time for dispatch—no hand-writing lefts and rights, no calling them out over the radio—and makes it easy for operators to navigate the detour with no wrong turns.

“Navigation in Onboard App will reduce human error when it comes to changes to service,” says Mayers of RTA of Central Maryland. “Today our staff have to manually write down the left-right instructions. They try to add landmarks, but it’s challenging because things can change. This reduces the guesswork.”

Build operator confidence with a modern navigation experience

While operator shortages have become less acute over the past few years, hiring, training, and retaining operators remains a challenge for many agencies.

As we’ve heard from transit agency staff, navigation challenges can be a major source of stress on the job. Providing operators with modern tools can instill confidence, alleviate stress, and help them do their best work. Better navigation tools can not only help with training new operators, but also operators learning new routes or navigating detours.

"With Navigation in Onboard App, everyone can have an opportunity to drive the bus, feel comfortable, and know where they're going," says Mayers of RTA of Central Maryland.

A modern approach to onboard technology

We’ve heard firsthand the challenges that unreliable navigation data and difficult-to-use interfaces can create for operators, operations teams, and riders.

We’ve spent the past two years working closely with some of the most innovative transit agencies in the country to develop a new navigation tool that improves service performance while instilling bus operators with confidence and comfort. Swiftly’s cloud-native approach to transit technology enables a modern, user-friendly solution to onboard navigation.

Our transit data platform has been designed around offering the best comprehensive picture of where a bus has been, is, and will be. We’re excited to use this uniquely accurate, reliable data to help transit agency staff and bus operators keep buses on-route, getting riders to where they need to be safely and on time.

Learn more

Want to learn more about Navigation in Onboard App? Reach out through the form below or contact your Swiftly Account Manager.