Leverage Your Troubleshooting Tools - Geographic Tools: Replay, Trigger Boxes, and BI Reports

Avail recommends leveraging your Geographic Tools and Business Intelligence reports to troubleshoot and identify why issues happen on the road when vehicles in service report issues (off route, early departures, extreme lates, trip flip issues, bad comms, bad GPS, MDT login issues).   

Geographic Tools Card

Simply open Geo Tools to use the Replay application to review a vehicle's performance. After entering the date, time, vehicle/s or route in question, and load the data, you can easily review the vehicle's bread crumb trail to see what happened on the road. 

Early Status Issues

Let's say that your dispatchers consistently report that no matter which vehicles and which drivers perform service on route X, the inbound stop at 3rd and Main St, on trips Y and D, are always departed too soon ( running hot).

Use the Replay tool to review the data collected by vehicles that serviced route X to identify what occurred during the service date/ time period. Then overlay the trigger boxes for route X and the inbound direction to review the geo fenced area around the stop in question. The issue may reside in the size of the trigger box or it may be the time offsets for paths that need refinements ( stop to stop distances and the timing for departures). It may also be that the stop is located in a less favorable place where a vehicle can't safely dwell for pick ups/ drop offs, for example, at intersecting roads and/ or traffic signals. Or, in other cases for early departures from timepoints, maybe your drivers need some refresher training?

You can also review your Running Times report in Business Intelligence to see if the times should be adjusted for the stop to stop distance in question: Does the vehicle have enough time to go from stop A to stop B? Or, it may be that different directions have different traffic patterns at different times of day.  Use the trigger box application to adjust the size of the trigger box at 3rd and Main to account for this for the inbound direction.

TIP: Road conditions, traffic patterns, weather, public community activities, people movement, etc., are all variables on the road that influence schedule adherence metrics. Creating digital schedules with realistic built- in 'cushioning' for scheduled depart times supports better schedule adherence. Trigger boxes help serve this purpose. Size matters.

Off Route Issues

Your dispatchers just noticed a vehicle off route. If the driver doesn't call in to report, you can use the Replay Tool to troubleshoot the issue. It may be that the driver encountered a detour area and had to deviate from the schedule 'on the fly'. Use your Detour Management tools to create a detour in this case, so the vehicle isn't seen as 'off route', the driver gets turn by turn directions, and your ridership is notified on myStop. Off route status's may also be related to operator training needs. Confirm your drivers are using the prompts on the MDT Status Bar (next three departures display and the tips-on time, early, off route, late, bad comms, bad GPS) and they know how to drive that piece of work. 

MSG Type Definitions

Stop report definitions tell a story about the vehicle's activity and are useful when troubleshooting what happened when the rubber hit the asphalt.

Takeaways:

  • Review your Replay tool for common issues on the road as a first step toward resolution
  • Create action plans to address needs

Leveraging Your BI Running Times Reports

Review your running times reports in the Planning & Scheduling reports section of Business Intelligence. These illustrate time allocations for your trips and how vehicles perform them. In some cases, when trips seem to overlap due to running late, you can 'buy back' minutes from one stop segment distance to another on a trip ( in your scheduling package) to improve overall on time performance at the trip level. Here's why - Some stop distances may be too long, some may be too short. As mentioned, these timing conditions can really influence overall performance on the road.

How do we know? Review your reports to assist in your decision-making processes. Use trend analysis to determine how vehicles perform over time. Are they consistently late, early, etc.? Use this information to identify where times can be adjusted. 

Is the actual drive time that's reported in BI up and layover or dwell time down when compared to what is scheduled? Well- balanced drive and dwell times bring great value to your service as they can better ensure drivers don't have to rush to service stops, and the reverse of that, making sure there isn't too much slack time either. Finetuning helps your drivers, your riders, and better optimizes use of your vehicle cycles. Are vehicles constantly late? Do you experience a high call rate for customers complaints? Use these metrics to assist in making improvements. 

Example: Fake Saturday Trip (Walmart, CVS, Mall, Rite Aid, Senior Center, Walmart). 

  • Walmart to CVS (2 minute scheduled travel time) - The travel time from Walmart to CVS is 2 minutes but vehicles typically run late by up to 3 minutes
  • CVS to the Mall (6 minute scheduled travel time) - The distance from CVS to the Mall is scheduled for 6 minutes, yet vehicles sometimes run early or on time here since there is extra time built into the drive time from Walmart to CVS
  • The Mall to Rite Aid (2 minutes travel time) - Vehicles may begin running late here as boards and alights at the mall took more time and departure runs late (over time)
  • Rite Aid to the Senior Center (2 minutes travel time) - Vehicles may be late arriving to Rite Aid 
  • The Senior Center back to Walmart (2 minutes travel time) - Vehicles may be late arriving to the Senior Center (making the trip run late/ overlapping the end of this trip and the start of the next trip which begins at the Walmart timepoint)

Takeaways:

  • Review you Running Times monthly to identify how vehicles perform over time and develop action plans around needs
  • Adjusting scheduled drive times can support better trip OTP metrics
  • Consistent late statuses can be an issue for both the schedule and customers who rely on your great service. 

Leverage Your Schedule Health Report

Business Intelligence also offers a report that identifies where scheduled service pieces have been missed/ not serviced. This report allows a focus on three different elements of your schedule: Stops, Timepoint Segments and Trips. This report is in your Planning & Scheduling reports > Schedule Health. It is worthy of a monthly review.

  • Click the hyperlink to review Avail's video for 'Schedule Health Check Up' here.

Why is this report important for your agency? Knowing ridership boards, UPTs, and completed trips are a part of reporting metrics for NTD, this report helps you find where service is being missed so you can develop a plan around improvements.

Identify Type of Need and Action Plan

Training: Do you see a trend over time? For example, is driver Y always skipping a particular stop? The action plan here would include more training, to ensure your drivers understand how to use the MDT stops display and the importance of servicing all stops on the schedule. 

Detours: Do you have any service being missed due to an ongoing detour? Creating a detour in Avail will allow the software to recognize these missed stops, segments and/or trips, meaning they won't be considered missed on the Schedule Health report. There are also certainly going to be cases where stops can't be serviced intermittently, due to 'on-the-fly' circumstances. That's okay. The system can account for those too. 

Schedule: Did you remove or add stops to the system with your last schedule deployment? This, too, ties into possible training needs. Why - the stops menu on the MDTs will change when you perform schedule updates, after the import and vehicles have downloaded the new schedules for use. Ensure your drivers are aware of new pathways, new stops, removed stops, moved stops, etc., before they take that piece of work. Drivers can also easily review the stops menu, for driving accuracy, when their vehicle is stationary at a stop, for example.

Leverage Your Ride Check Sheet

This report is located in the Statistics section of Business Intelligence and displays each scheduled trip, along with the stops in the order in which they should be serviced, with their depart times. We generally use this report for route validation purposes (confirming actions that occur in the vehicle on the road match scheduled expectations). This report is also useful for reviewing the stop to stop distances/times for trips, as highlighted below: 

Leverage Your Camera System

Reviewing video clips from the camera set in your vehicles, if installed, is also a useful tool to troubleshoot issues. We know these systems really serve the purpose of proving/ disproving activity in and around the vehicle. Leverage this information when applicable to the situation.

Takeaways: Avail's goal is to provide you with the tools you need to identify any issues related to your scheduled service by offering troubleshooting tools that will help you find issues so you can then create action plans around those needs. 

 

 

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