SAIC Modernizes Real-Time Traveler Information for the Bay Area

As most highway travelers know, state and local governments have long offered up-to-the-minute traffic and transit live updates to the public through 511 phone and websites. What many may not have known is SAIC's involvement in enhancing a robust and modern 511 system in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Established by the Federal Communications Commission in July 2000, the 511 telephone number has been reserved for state and local transit jurisdictions to report timely traveler information to the public, such as traffic delays, weather advisories, transit schedules, and tourism information. Implementation of the systems has been left to state and local agencies and most have built accompanying 511 websites.

A team of SAIC software engineers in the San Francisco Bay Area have built upon the legacy system and modernized it for the mobile user as well as added multi-modal tools.

Today, customers can retrieve traveler information via the phone or web, on their Android™ or Apple® mobile device through an application that can plan a trip, map it, offer door-to-door public transit directions, and push transit updates through messaging. Even the famed San Francisco cable cars are part of the system, giving tourists a hassle-free experience.

SAIC has used its information technology and systems integration skills to create a modern dissemination system that includes the Internet, mobile applications, and text messaging. In the Bay Area, the 511 project is managed by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC).

SAIC has worked with Bay Area authorities to pioneer many 511 offerings, launching services that were the first of their kind, including up-to-the minute traffic and transit modal sites housed on 511.org, an enhanced trip planner, a mobile application, and a text messaging service.

Since 1999, SAIC has contracted with MTC to develop and operate the transit system, which incorporated schedule changes, fare changes, routes changes, stop changes, and traveler alerts. In 2006, SAIC began building the trip planner, and operating and maintaining the transit portion of 511.org.

In 2008 the trip planner was successfully launched, and in 2009 SAIC won another contract for the traffic and real time transit systems with MTC. The traffic contract includes a complicated data collection, fusion and dissemination system that incorporates real time traffic conditions, real time transit departures, incidents (accidents and roadway construction), and special events reporting.

Each month, there are an average of 4 million web and phone requests, and over 35 public transit agencies are tapped to provide timely, accurate, and complete information. The team also maintains a Traveler Information Center (TIC) 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, where operators update incident and construction information as well as any other breaking information that could impact travel conditions. The TIC operates around the clock so that the critical traveler information is gathered and distributed through various 511 channels as urgently as possible.

In December, MTC celebrated its 10-year anniversary and thanked the companies leading the charge to develop the 511 program in a press release.

The Future of 511

Major and minor upgrades are continuously made to improve the system for a technologically sophisticated and demanding population. Real time information is available for many agencies and scheduled transit information is updated frequently to reflect changes due to holidays and school schedules, providing trip planning information that's as accurate as possible.

The recently introduced enhanced trip planner provides a side-by-side comparison of using transit, driving, or a combination of both. This multi-modal system also informs travelers about park-and-ride options along with pricing, fares, and alternate routes. For commuters, this functionality minimizes the overall travel time without increasing overall miles travelled in their vehicle.

SAIC and MTC staff recently completed and deployed a revamped traffic web page that forms the template for other MTC web page updates and a new real-time parking web page. The 511 traffic team has also started working to move its systems to an Amazon cloud to improve data reliability, scalability and storage — the first step in ultimately moving the entire MTC 511 to the cloud.

Additionally, SAIC is developing application programming interfaces (APIs) to disseminate 511 data to the developer community, with a goal of creating new tools that will enable end users to receive traveler information from various channels and further reduce cost of ongoing operations for MTC.