Saint Louis Metro Digitizes Bus Stop Maintenance with Mobile GIS Solution

With many active and inactive bus stop locations to monitor and manage, Saint Louis Metro Transit has turned to ArcGIS Survey123 for a solution.

The days of paper-based field surveys are quickly moving to the dust bin of data collection. The shortcomings of paper surveys have been painfully apparent for some time: There was always an element of subjectivity in reporting by individual personnel, and the information captured was often stored in multiple physical locations. It was not fully “uploaded” and made accessible for further analysis. Digitization addresses these issues. Applications on mobile devices enable more formalized reporting routines. They unify data collection, enable near-instant uploading, and provide convenient access thereafter to multiple layers of information stored in centralized electronic databases. Using Esri mobile technology, Metro Transit has been able to digitize its field collection workflows and gain significant efficiencies in its bus stop maintenance activities.

The parent organization of Metro Transit, Bi-State Development, is a unique economic development organization in Saint Louis, Missouri. Bi-State Development is responsible for a number of the region's diverse transportation assets. Through a federally approved interstate compact between Missouri and Illinois, it has broad powers across a six-county area, and operates enterprises which include the Gateway Arch Riverfront, Metro Transit, Saint Louis Downtown Airport, and the Saint Louis Regional Freightway. The organization’s goal is to further the overall economic development of the region. For an organization of its size and complexity, information is critical to Bi-State Development’s success.

For Metro Transit, which has over 10,000 active and inactive bus stops spread over its service area, accurate information is especially important. Metro staff needed a way to effectively collect and maintain information about those stops, including their compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and amenities such as benches, shelters, garbage cans, and so on. Accurate stop information is, for most public transit agencies, the basic building block around which most other information is connected.

Using the tablet-based process, and all in a matter of minutes, an inspector can arrive at a stop site, record latitude and longitude, run through the drop-down menu questions, and take pictures of inbound and outbound routes.From launch to May 2024, 1,000 stops were assessed and recorded. For comparison, Steve Hughes, a Bi-State Development programmer and analyst and the primary administrator for ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online environments, estimated that achieving the same number of inspections using the clipboard-and-camera approach of the old paper-based regime would have taken six to eight months longer. “It’s become possible to collect information on up to 50 stops in a day,” Hughes said. “With the paper-based regime, an inspector would have to conduct surveys, then return to an office to clean up the information gathered and perhaps create a new checklist. All of that information would then go into a box somewhere. There was no immediate access, and it was difficult to keep track of the status of assessments over time. ArcGIS and Survey123 give us things that we’ve not been able to capitalize on in the past.” The response from mobile crews to the Survey123 application has been very enthusiastic. Staff have become very accustomed to the drop-down menu. Their work is further simplified by the use of cascading. For instance, in a shelter cleaning form, crews can select zones and routes and be given specific locations to visit without having to scroll through hundreds of locations. Staff work is also further streamlined when cleaning contracts go out to tender; the successful companies also download the Survey123 app and use it as part of their contracted work. “They have to agree to use it, but it’s proven to be very popular with vendors as it enables them to capture data electronically and to monitor their teams’ performance over the day,” Hughes continued.

Two separate dashboards support the bus stop assessment application. One lists all the inspections done and allows editing of notes and comments after the fact. This feature has been used as a constant check on the consistency and uniformity of the data. Although the drop-down menus reduce the amount of ‘wiggle room’ available to inspectors, it is still useful to be able to check whether individual interpretations remain within acceptable bounds and to safeguard compliance. 

Metro staff turned to ArcGIS Survey123 for their field collection application. They worked with various groups within Metro for roughly six months to design and implement the application, which went live in March of 2023. Key aims were to enable faster, more uniform field inspections that would facilitate maintenance and asset management and validate information already recorded in the agency’s stop database. A key to the success of the application was the strong involvement from Metro Transit’s Planning Department. This helped to ensure that all necessary aspects of an inspection were included, such as ADA compliance, and that the flow of work for on-site personnel using the app would be logical and intuitive. The application can pull information about every stop in the field simply by typing in the stop ID. Once entered, the application populates with the stop name(s) and all the associated amenities listed in the database. Any maintenance requirements identified in the field, such as the need to move signage to improve visibility or replace broken shelter panels, can be entered in the service request field. Similarly, site changes such as a stop’s precise location or the absence or addition of amenities, can easily update the corporate stop database. Previously, Metro staff did not have a well-established workflow for maintaining the constant currency of their database.
 

The other dashboard reports scoring of individual bus stops. Scores are driven by the condition of the stop, ADA compliance, and the absence or presence of amenities. The data is combined with information from ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World to show how funding for improvements can be targeted where it is most needed. Wider visibility is provided by an internal asset management site using ArcGIS Hub. On the Hub site, a web map application shows all stop locations and structures maintained by the agency. This includes bridges and tunnels, retaining walls, culverts, and more. The Hub site enables an overlay of proposed capital projects onto these existing structures so that their impacts can be seen. It is available to upwards of 2,000 employees. 
 

A publicly accessible map provides information about the Saint Louis Regional Freightway, including locations for river terminals, airports, storage, and warehousing—among other things.
 

Metro Transit continues to use ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS QuickCapture to create apps which support real-time needs. These include, for example, passenger counts (boarding and alighting locations) and power pole locations for the historic streetcar, which serves the Delmar Loop entertainment district. However, Hughes describes ArcGIS Survey123 as "continuing to do the heavy lifting" for his organization, with the Safety Department being one of his biggest internal customers. All told, for the Safety Department, around 20 web and mobile applications support activities such as hazard reporting, vehicle inspections, vulnerability assessments for bus and light-rail stops, construction project progress reporting safety pledges, and bridge inspections and damage assessments. The Safety Department has incorporated the technology into their agency-wide safety management system. It includes both written text and a QR code which takes users to Survey123. There, users can input their safety concerns and request further action. This Survey123/QR code approach is also used for non-geographic applications. An example is employees reporting their use of prescription drugs, which may affect their performance at work. Individuals can now submit forms to the agency’s drug and alcohol program manager in the time it takes to complete an online form. Before, the paper process could take a long time to move information through internal distribution. The technology will be utilized further to improve public engagement and gain travelers’ input/feedback on service performance and other issues. A particular example is the Secure Platform project. Currently, the light-rail facilities operated by Metro Transit are all open. For safety and security reasons, security gates are being added at all 38 stations. Survey123 in combination with QR codes will enable the organization to build a communications platform that the public will find easy to use. In this and many other ways, Metro Transit is pushing paper to the dust bin of their workflows and fully embracing more efficient processes.