SUCCESS STORY
New York City TransitIndustry• TransitSolution• OpenText™ Magellan™ BI & Reporting

Results
Improved decision-making
through data visualization
and analysis
Increased transparency andimproved access to dataand reports
Enhanced responsiveness toperformance issues

Transit Authority transforms route
performance through data analysis

OpenText Magellan BI & Reporting helps New York City Transit Authority
enable public transparency and system improvement“In addition to internal users,
we report to the public, andthey’re mostly concernedwith how to improve service.
Now we can troubleshootand understand anyproblems with service, andtake action right away.”
Alla Reddy

Senior director, System Data and Research
New York City Transit Authority

Transit Authority transforms route performance through data analysis

The New York City Transit Authority (NYCT) is the largest
transportation network in North America, serving 15 million people
throughout a 5,000-square-mile area. With 24 subway lines, 224
bus routes and a total of 45,000 employees, NYCT serves more thanseven million people weekly. Its Operations Planning department ischarged with bus and subway scheduling for the entire transit system.

Improved reporting, better use of data
NYCT’s Operations Planning department has long collected data tohelp transit employees running New York’s bus and subway routes.
The data analysis unit provides answers when other departments—aswell as members of the public—have questions or problems regarding
performance, or want to identify potential improvements to services
or operations.
Traditionally, the NYCT employed traffic checkers to collect bus
and subway performance data, then reports were created withMicrosoft Excel and presented quarterly. New technologies now
generate data automatically.
®

®

To create true performance change, the department knew it had
to offer data on a daily basis to enable timely performance andservice adjustments. To accomplish that, it needed a robust
reporting and analytics application.

Meeting realtime needs
The solution would have to support NYCT’s existing data collection
technology. It would also need to keep up with big data demands
and allow interested parties to examine data when and how theywanted, accessing more detail as required. The goal was to stay
on top of performance concerns in realtime—from malfunctioning
lifts to route change needs or gaps in service. “With the righttool, they could become much more proactive in how they’remonitoring the service and how they’re improving it,” said
Anthony Cramer, director of System Data Analysis with NYCT’sOperations Planning department.
To accomplish that, the reporting technology needed to meet thefollowing key criteria:• Be cost effective, flexible and scalable enough to keep up with
Subway movement information is provided via NYCT’s General Transit
the millions of data points coming in each day.
Feed Specification (GTFS), while location intelligence from Google Maps
integration is transmitted from up to 5,000 buses every 30 seconds,• Connect to multiple data sources, including data accessed
24 hours a day. In addition, the Operations Planning department
directly from NYCT vehicles, such as vehicle sensors and location
gathers diagnostic and event data from its Intelligent Vehicle Network
intelligence. One example is NYCT’s Bus Time Automatic Vehicle
sensors, which transmit data when something of note happens, such as
Location tracking program, which follows GPS data on every bus.
movement of doors, wheelchair ramps, etc. In total, tens of thousands• Work seamlessly with open source database MongoDB for big dataof records per minute—or millions of rows of data per day—must beand Google Maps for location intelligence.
recorded and distilled into useable and helpful information.
• Be easy to use and accessible for the many departments looking to
Despite this wealth of data, there was no way of analyzing andaccess data daily, without the need for extensive IT assistance.
distributing all of that information in a quick and effective manner.

“One area where OpenText
Magellan BI & Reporting
really shines is in theintegrated developmentenvironment. That’s theprime reason why wechose OpenText. Now,we’re integrating oursystems seamlessly.
It gave us flexibility,scalability andvisualization.”
Alla Reddy

Senior director,
System Data and Research
New York City Transit Authority

Transit Authority transforms route performance through data analysis“The goal was to make it a self-service shop, to let the people whowant the reports get them when they need them, and be able to run
them and customize them as needed,” said Cramer. “We felt that theemail distribution route was not efficient—if some people were out, it
just became a distribution bottleneck. We wanted to eliminate that.”“One area where BI & Reporting really shines is the integrated
development environment. That’s a prime reason why we chose
OpenText,” said Tuan Huynh, senior developer with NYCT. “Now
we’re integrating our systems seamlessly. It gave us flexibility,scalability and visualization.”

Converting to OpenText Magellan BI & Reporting

Illy Popovits, NYCT’s development manager, added: “BI & Reporting
could integrate with our different data sources. None of the othersolutions we looked at, or that we could develop, were as flexible
or as user friendly.”With those goals in mind, NYCT sought a reporting platform that waspowerful enough to keep up with these demands, but could also fit
within their budget and resource constraints. “We had a pretty goodfeel as to what we needed to deliver. What we didn’t know were thedifferent mechanisms for delivering it,” Cramer said. “We’d never
got to the point of presenting it in a visually arresting manner. We
just didn’t have the technology.”
The team began looking at software vendors for out-of-the-box
reporting. Most of the offerings were either not flexible enough tocustomize to transit reporting needs—as they were designed formore finance-oriented reporting—or exceeded both their budget andinfrastructure capabilities.
The team chose OpenText™ Magellan™ BI & Reporting, branding it as
Operations Research Computational Analysis (ORCA). Able to scale
to the organization’s needs, BI & Reporting could easily plug into all of
NYCT’s data sources, both present and those planned for future use.
Virtualization and Google Maps apps expanded its capabilities, withmobile access enabling employees to view reports while on the go.
Overall, the team has been impressed by the solution’s ease of use.

Initially, NYCT focused largely on the solution’s reporting functionality,
creating and distributing approximately 80 different reports, both inrealtime and on a nightly basis. They have also created dashboards
to offer snapshots of performance to senior management. The teamplans to expand dashboards even more, empowering field personnel
to drill down further to get to the details they need.
With the help of BI & Reporting, their goal is to create datatransparency, where key information is easily accessible bothinternally and externally, driving continual performance improvement.
“NYCT is committed to an open data environment,” Cramer said.
“That begins with making as much data as possible available to ourcustomers, from countdown clocks at subway stations to realtime
arrival apps, all powered by an open, cloud-based system.”
The OpenText solution is doing its part to help NYCT achieve datatransparency, while also enabling the seamless flow of data throughthe transit department. Transit schedules can now be adjusted more
rapidly, improving service for commuters throughout the city.

Transit Authority transforms route performance through data analysis“We’re providing them the tools to respond to customer
complaints,” said Cramer.

Exceeding public and internal expectations
With up-to-date information available at their fingertips, NYCT
Operations Planning employees can respond to performance issues
much faster than before, and field employees can see and react tothat same data immediately. That means fewer complaints from thepublic and the ability to respond more quickly to those that come in.
“In addition to internal users, we report to the public, and they’remostly concerned with how to improve service. Now we cantroubleshoot and understand any problems with service, and takeaction right away,” said Alla Reddy, Senior Director of System Data
and Research with Operations Planning.
Thanks to BI & Reporting, the NYCT was able to track several otherimprovements as well. For instance, it was able to improve its datavisualization capabilities, providing daily and ad hoc reports as well asdashboards that offer performance snapshots to senior managementand operations employees who can now view data at the level ofdetail necessary to do their jobs better. While increasing functionality,
the team also projects significant cost savings.

Data distribution has become more seamless, with automated datacollection and better service, which requires fewer resources. “Wehave a pretty lean development team that can support a wide andhigh volume of users,” Cramer explained. “We can support twice
the number of users with the same level of support staff.”
While different groups within Operations Planning previously worked
in their own data silos, now everyone can work together in a singleintegrated system. This open, transparent environment combines
data from different divisions and offers a fuller picture of the entire
transit system, resulting in better project integration. “Projects
are not necessarily in a vacuum anymore,” said Cramer. “We’recommunicating better, and making more informed decisions
thanks to ORCA and BI & Reporting.”

Future plans
As their use of the reporting technology progresses, NYCT plansto push information to the public via mobile devices, allowing theirridership and general public to view and analyze transit performance,
as well individual bus and subway lines.

About OpenText
OpenText, The Information Company,
enables organizations to gain insight
through market leading information
management solutions, on-premises orin the cloud. For more information about
OpenText (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTEX)
visit opentext.com.
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