Token Transit: Where are my riders?

Token Transit finds the origin stop for rides taken through our system

If there is one thing that you should know about Token Transit, it is this — we are public transit fanatics.

There is a second thing: we love data. We are not alone — all our 46 partner agencies agree that mobile phones can help us learn about our ridership. That’s why Token Transit gives our partners the information they need, while respecting the riders’ privacy.

This month, we are making it easy to know where rides are coming from.

We are making the origin stop of all Token Transit rides viewable through the Token Transit agency web portal.

The Ridership Origin map in the portal shows a map of all agency stops, along with how many riders boarded the bus at these stops. On the map, the size of the bus icon is automatically adjusted based on the number of riders: the more popular the stop, the larger the icon.

Origin map for Token Transit rides taken on Big Blue Bus in May 2018, with a zoomed in image showing a specific number of rides at a given bus stop.

The map can be grouped by specific pass or rider types as well as date ranges. This way, our agency partners can explore the use of each of their passes in detail.

Filter your data by dates, pass types and more!

Explore uses of each of pass individually can provide clear value. For example, we can narrow the above map down by rider category, to see ridership patterns among Big Blue Bus’s “BruinGo!” pass holders — UCLA students, participating in a joint pilot program with Big Blue Bus and Token Transit. Filtering the data can help agencies target specific groups of riders with advertisements, promotions, and potential route changes.

Origin stops for UCLA students riding with Token Transit

Figuring out the origin stop is not always trivial. For example, well-prepared riders may activate their passes ahead of time, away from bus stops. Plus, for obvious trust reasons, we want to be careful with the riders’ privacy.

Luckily, our lead data architect, Philip “8” Gianfortoni has the perfect solution.

To link pass uses to bus stops, Token Transit uses the following information:

• The location of the rider’s phone at the exact time of bus pass activation.
• The GTFS feed, provided to us by the agency. From the feed, we take the stop location and stop time information and combine it with the location of each of our riders when they use our app to board the bus.

For each boarding, we pick the most likely stop based on the user’s location and the time the user boards. This allows us to not just link pass uses to bus stops, but also, potentially, the route and bus location.

We then aggregate the trip information based on pass and rider types. As each pass type, rider type, and date range is selected, we dynamically filter and aggregate the data at each stop. At the end of each month, ridership data is automatically processed so each of our agencies can see the latest ridership maps.

Rides for May are shown on the map, and aggregated by the origin bus stop.

Token Transit believes that, when it comes to understanding their riders, transit agencies know best. That’s why all our data is available to download as a set of CSV files. Input Token Transit into a planning tool of your choice, and let us know what you do with it!

Want to see the maps for your agency? Token Transit can launch in under 72 hours so contact us to get started or say hello at info@tokentransit.com.

If you are one of the 46 transit agencies already on board with Token Transit (no pun intended!), stay tuned for our posts about computing Origin/Destination data, keeping track of pass distribution programs, and more.