LYNX Maximizes the Use of GIS to Support Business Operations

The use of geographic information system (GIS) technology is becoming more widespread at LYNX, largely through the dedicated efforts of a small team, as they look to employ it in just about any way they can. 

The GIS staff actively seeks to find new areas to apply GIS technology within their agency. Also, when dealing with specific information requests, the team attempts to craft their responses to the widest possible range of users. These responses are a product of necessity, as the small size of the team requires them to be strategic in their support of the wider agency. Their results have been impressive and extend across the organization.

LYNX—the public-facing branding of the Central Florida Regional Transportation Authority—provides 68 fixed-route bus services to the greater Orlando, Florida area in Orange, Seminole, and Osceola counties, as well as limited services to Polk county. Annual ridership in 2022 was 17,187,900, or about 55,200 per weekday as of the fourth quarter of 2022.

One of the first key areas of GIS support is paratransit and on-demand mobility service, which complements the agency’s fixed-route operations and enhances overall service to the public. A part of that support entails helping to establish eligibility for the organization’s grants department, which is responsible for ensuring reimbursement and funding streams.

LYNX operates two non-fixed transportation services: Access LYNX is a shared-ride door-to-door transportation service for eligible individuals who are not able to use the regular fixed-route bus service due to a disability or limitation and NeighborLink is an on-demand flex service for more sparsely populated areas.

Both operate on a zonal basis and GIS is used to determine the best fit for customers, as well as their eligibility for funding/service support. Francis Franco, GIS Supervisor for LYNX, shares that there is an ongoing effort to validate and consolidate zones, and take a more strategic look at where pick up/drop-off points are. Guided by a board of elected officials as to where they think there is the greatest need, GIS is used to discover how changes to services and zone boundaries can be made, and what impacts those changes would have.
 

"A central consideration for their services," he continues, "is accessibility within the zones, particularly the commercial and food gaps within zones, and accessibility between transportation services and recreational and employment centers." Using apps, dashboards, and maps available through ArcGIS Online, staff at LYNX can analyze the demographic data within the zones, as well as the origins and destinations of the various trips to understand how zones might be modified.

A second major area of support for GIS is the preparation of various specific grant and other funding proposals, as well as the Title VI equity analysis required by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). LYNX has made a concerted effort to analyze the mobility needs of specific disadvantaged communities with the goal of attracting additional funds targeted at these residents. All the analyses and visualization associated with these efforts are carried out in-house by the GIS staff.

Closely related to these analyses is the GIS support of basic fixed-route service planning within the agency. Much of the organization’s ridership is workforce-based and decidedly seasonal, with a large portion supporting the main local leisure attractions, such as the Universal Studios and Disney theme parks/resorts. LYNX also has a super-stop, which services a number of different malls. 

LYNX conducts four major service changes a year, and the process of monitoring the effects of changes begins as soon as they are implemented. A mobile data collection application, ArcGIS Survey123, and LYNX’s own apps bring together operator and passenger information, enabling executives to monitor activities via an internal operations dashboard. On-vehicle automated passenger counting is a separate system, but its data is consolidated through ArcGIS Dashboards. 
 

A constant part of service planning involves looking at transit use at the station and stop level and determining whether to upgrade existing facilities to super-stations or add new stops close to existing ones. A current challenge associated with this analysis is the shortage of operators and how that serves to restrict service levels. While this is a national issue and not unique to LYNX, it has led to some necessary changes, including an increase in the number of express routes to Orlando International Airport. Still, elsewhere, there are times when services simply cannot be provided.

The solutions have been to engage robustly with local communities to keep them informed of what is happening—including LYNX currently hiring—and close cooperation with other transportation users and providers to ensure that disruption is kept to a minimum.

With changes in organizational leadership, and with greater requirements from FTA, there is a greater focus on asset management and how GIS can support the agency’s larger asset management efforts. An example is monitoring garbage collection at bus stops and how to set clearance events. Additionally, bus shelter inspections and maintenance activities are also coordinated through GIS. This works in parallel with Survey123 to capture and document activities, and on-site operatives are prompted through the app to indicate whether they are responding to a work order or taking auxiliary/ad hoc action. Survey123 also supports incident response and management in the case of accidents and bus stop damage.

As LYNX’s asset management practices mature, GIS will become an integral part of most major workflows, but in the interim, the logic embedded within Survey123 is also being used to promote LYNX’s office recycling and procurement programs. Although these are non-spatial applications, Franco says that this has the benefit of promoting the use of—and wider familiarity with—GIS technology. 

Closely associated with asset management is the concept of risk and safety management—currently required of all major transit systems within the US. At present, LYNX supports risk management using Survey123. Incidents and violations are all geocoded, including requests for information on particular addresses or locations. All of this information is then uploaded and displayed on an operations dashboard. 

Additionally, Survey123 is utilized during storms and extreme weather, including hurricanes. Franco notes that this is a significant step forward from trying to record events on a wet paper map and is “all about using the platform to the maximum”.
 

LYNX is gearing towards using ArcGIS Experience Builder for application development. This is in-line with the increasing number of more specific requests—a bespoke dashboard can be created, rather than visitors clicking on maps and searching for specific elements—and it follows on from the use of ArcGIS Insights.

“The initial dashboard we developed for the funding partners was a hit, so we developed more,” said Franco. “ArcGIS Insights has been great for visualization in support of project management, and it seems popular, especially when dealing with ad hoc requests.” 

As the organization runs a very small GIS team—it currently consists of Franco and one other person—the ambition, even when building a dashboard to serve a specific request, is to have it serve as many additional potential users as possible.

For example, should an urban zone/fare-related request be received from the grants team, the GIS team might look to add route information as well. The initial internal customer may not, in the first instance, be asking about routes, but the information is there in ArcGIS Insights should it be wanted or needed subsequently—whether by the individual(s) who made the initial request, or someone else.

“We could just respond to requests with a table of trips, but instead we put everything into Insights and share a link. The users can then see everything—where people are going, which zip codes and urban zones boundaries are getting the most trips, what fares are going to a particular urban zone, and so on. They can then produce tables and graphs if they want or need to, and generally maneuver the information at their own pace. It’s just a little bit more self-serve in terms of the initial requests.”

To support performance monitoring and automatic vehicle location, a next step is to acquire ArcGIS GeoEvent and its real-time analytics capabilities. That would result in LYNX having an enterprise environment, asset management, and fleet monitoring all in the GIS system.

Real-time vehicle tracking would augment, for instance, LYNX’s already impressive Customer Service dashboard. Although at first sight it's very simple, it contains a large amount of data in pop-up form. The dashboard includes information on accessibility (absence of obstructions to wheelchairs, connections to sidewalks) and other amenities at bus stops (shelter, bike racks)—all common questions that people want answered ahead of travel. There is also a situational awareness component in the form of a direct link to Street View and a transit ‘leaderboard’ which gives details of links to and from each stop. For both operator and customer, GeoEvent would add real-time bus movements between stops.

Again, multi-use is to the fore: The data filters available within a dashboard oriented towards customers can also be used, for instance, by LYNX’s maintenance team when scoping to find a vendor for cleaning services at stops. 

LYNX demonstrates how a small but enthusiastic team can derive the best possible results from GIS. Innovative approaches, such as using nonspatial applications to engage as much as possible with LYNX’s workforce and a drive to maximize outputs’ versatility, are backed by enthusiastic adoption wherever possible of the latest generations of software.

"The result," says Franco, "is not so much an organization that functions better with GIS—it is more one that simply could not do so in its current form without it."