Reinventing Public Transit for the COVID Era
Announcing the COVID-19 Challenge, and 4 Lessons Learned
In April, when Governor Cuomo directed the MTA to start disinfecting the subway daily amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the transit agency announced that — for the first time in 100 years — they would close every night to get the job done. While the cleaning effort advanced, the MTA had a new challenge: moving thousands of essential workers overnight without trains.
That might sound like an impossible task for a transit system that relies so much on the subway, but they did just that. And within a week the MTA released a new app with startup AxonVibe for essential workers to plan journeys and book for-hire vehicles if bus trips aren’t feasible.
Government apps often take years to develop. How did the MTA do it so quickly?
The app is one of the outcomes of the Transit Tech Lab, a collaboration between the MTA and nonprofit Partnership for New York City, created in response to Governor Cuomo’s call to modernize public transportation in New York.
Since the Transit Tech Lab was launched in 2018, the program has expanded to include every major regional transit system, and taken on challenges from accessibility to subway signaling.
Here are a few important lessons we’ve learned, and what we think they mean for the future of public transit:
1. Redesign technology procurement for better outcomes.
It’s no secret that tech procurement in government is deeply flawed. Overly prescriptive, full of onerous hurdles that discourage smaller, more innovative companies, incompatible with the digital, cloud-based age of technology, and painfully slow — it’s no wonder that advanced tech companies don’t seek out government RFPs that will be awarded several years later. Couple this with the risk-averse culture of any large organization, and you rarely invite new approaches to longstanding challenges.
To turn this on its head, the Transit Tech Lab starts with the outcome that the government hopes to achieve, and issues an open challenge statement to the world. Our team researches and engages the world’s most advanced companies, inviting them to apply. Then transit agencies hear from them firsthand, weigh insights from private sector evaluators, and choose the most promising companies for an 8-week ‘try before you buy’ proof of concept. Critically, the Lab requires that companies use standard formats and provide structured data to agencies, preventing vendor lock-in and further increasing competition.
For the participating agencies, the benefits go far beyond getting a chance to test new technologies. It also increases morale within the agency, and transforms culture to encourage creative approaches and continuous improvement.
2. Digitize transit’s analog systems to enable data-driven operations.
Reflecting broader infrastructure trends, we quickly noticed that every Transit Tech Lab company digitizes an analog aspect of the transportation system, producing actionable data for service delivery. A few examples:
- Acoustic Protocol digitizes audio announcements
- AxonVibe digitizes service alerts and maps
- Carmera digitizes traffic routes and obstructions
- curbFlow digitizes traffic coordination at the curb
- Knaq digitizes elevator and escalator maintenance
- Navilens digitizes maps and schedules for the visually impaired
- Numina digitizes pedestrian and vehicle movements
- Okeeanea digitizes way-finding
- Preteckt digitizes bus monitoring and maintenance
- Remix digitizes transit system planning
- Veovo digitizes passenger flow measurement
Each company brings domain expertise. Each transit agency retains ownership and control of its data.
Together, these tools provide a spectrum of modernization, from producing data for real-time situational awareness and service delivery, to building a “digital twin” of urban transportation systems that can be used to model and predict travel patterns.
3. Innovate as one team — because customers don’t care whose job it is.
Transit systems conform to strict boundaries; customers don’t. And customers don’t care if their commute depends on the MTA, DOT or NJT — they just need to get from Point A to Point B safely, quickly and reliably.
New York City’s public transportation authorities are an interwoven, overlapping patchwork of jurisdictions, managed at different levels of local, city, state and federal government. That’s why we’ve expanded the Transit Tech Lab to include every major public transportation authority in the region: Amtrak, MTA, NJ Transit, NYC’s Department of Transportation and Taxi and Limousine Commission, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Not only can this regional coordination create a better experience for customers, but transit agencies — which often grapple with the same challenges — can learn from one another and leverage the best practices of their counterparts.
4. Embrace customers’ multimodal reality.
It’s nearly impossible for a customer to use a single means of transportation to move around. Before COVID, in the same week I regularly took ferries, subways, buses, bikes, planes, cars and rideshare. NYC recently added mopeds and e-scooters to the mode mix.
Private sector companies like Lyft have long understood this, providing apps that integrate Lyft trips with public transit and their own Citibike. Recognizing the public health benefits of distributing demand across multiple modes, transit is supporting the multimodal nature of their customers’ journeys. The MTA’s Essential Connector app, which allows essential workers to book for-hire vehicle trips if bus routes are not feasible during overnight subway closures, is one example — and there are many. As a result, customers benefit from a safer, more personalized experience.
COVID-19 could have spelled the end of public transit. Instead, innovators are rising to the challenge. This ingenuity, combined with critical financial support from the federal government, can enable a new era in mobility.
Today we’re building on this momentum with the launch of a COVID-19 Response Challenge serving the transit agencies of the hard-hit New York region, calling for innovation in health and safety. Learn more at transitinnovation.org.
It’s not easy to create change in any large organization. But it’s a testament to the creativity and dedication of our partners in public transit and tech that they’re making it happen when it couldn’t be more vital to the future of our city.
