Bus data analysis is just the ticket

Transport for London (TFL), the body responsible for public transport in the capital has rolled-out a new querying and reporting dashboard platform in order to improve its running of London's bus services.

TFL is responsible for an average of 5.4 million bus journeys every weekday in the capital, across 3,730km of bus routes, using a fleet of buses operated on an outsourced basis by a host of different transport companies.

TFL began deploying version 8 of Hyperion Intelligence at the end of 2004, working with business intelligence specialists Rosetta Stone. Prior to the deployment of the Hyperion Intelligence and its dashboard technology, all the data relating to the bus services were initially managed and queried using an Oracle-based system, which had fragmented into a large number of bespoke client applications, many developed by individuals running on single PCs, without the direct knowledge or control of the IT department.

'The major problem we had before the deployment of the dashboards was fragmentation of data' said Olliver Robinson, client account manager for Transport for London's bus operations. 'We were losing the very data integrity we were trying to protect with our previous Oracle-based database structure, not to mention having to absorb a great deal of cost for skilled staff to do Oracle Reports development'.

The Oracle platform remains at the centre of TFL's data structure, but with the Hyperion technology providing a simplified, easier to modify and aggregated display of operational data for the bus services.

Among the tasks that TFL has simplified with the Hyperion Intelligence product is the co-ordination of schedules between bus operators, as part of its efforts to reduce incidents of multiple buses arriving at once. Using the system of beacons along London's bus routes that monitor the location and progress of the buses, TFL is able to query the live data using the dashboard, integrate with mapping tools to plot the bus network and analyse the results from all sources in a single view in order to get a clear picture of the state of the bus network far faster than before. Access to data is controlled more effectively, improving security and simplifying the data displays by only showing relevant information to individuals.

'TFL is now using the software to analyse and produce reports on how accurately those 40 plus bus companies are meeting the timetables and maintaining service requirements, and take action where necessary' said Robinson.