Nashville's WeGo Public Transit Leverages GIS Technology to Make Transit More Accessible

GIS-driven interactive maps are helping WeGo Public Transit improve customer relations with disadvantaged communities and more intelligently and adaptively implement future services.

The Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority (Nashville MTA), better known to local travelers as WeGo Public Transit, provides bus and paratransit service to Tennessee's capital and the surrounding Davidson County. It provides service on 25 local bus routes, 7 regional commuter-based bus routes, paratransit services, and a 32-mile commuter rail line. With an annual ridership of more than 5 million, it serves a population of over 715,000 across a total area of 526 square miles.

Like with most public transit agencies, WeGo's ridership and revenues were severely affected by the pandemic and lockdown. In its case, there was a 60 percent drop in ridership from prepandemic levels, and service was curtailed by roughly 75 percent, with the major focus put on those routes serving essential workers and the transit dependent.

And like many other public transit agencies, WeGo understands that post-COVID-19, the future shape of its services will likely be different. As white-collar working habits have changed, there is no longer the presumption that regional and downtown commuter routes need to be first back into service—and certainly not in anything like the frequencies and capacities that were assumed necessary even a couple of years ago. The focus has shifted to better understanding the changing mobility patterns in Nashville, and better understanding who the truly transit dependent are and where they live and work.

At the same time, the City of Nashville itself has been managing a number of demographic changes and trends predating COVID-19. As the city's popularity has increased, so has the influx of large companies, resulting in not only a densification of downtown but also a process of gentrification of the urban core. This trend increased housing densities but also led to increased rents, which have priced many people out, pushing many of the transit dependent to the farthest reaches of the city. At the same time, as a result of refugee resettlement, Nashville now has several financially disadvantaged communities for whom English is a second language. Spanish, Arabic, and Kurdish are all commonly spoken.

To help understand and better plan for these changing trends, WeGo has turned to data analytics and geographic information system (GIS) technology to modify its service to more effectively target special populations and communicate with those that are difficult to reach.

Communicating major service changes to any public audience is a challenge, and the addition of a foreign language only adds to the complexity. Often basic textual explanations are of limited value, and even static maps can fail to convey important messages.

To solve the issue, WeGo has been using interactive online maps, powered by Esri's GIS software.

According to transit business intelligence analyst Hannah Schaefer, interactive maps have become a great success for the agency. They inform the transit-dependent population, enabling them to continue their lives with minimal disruption while route or other infrastructural changes take place. 
 

The first interactive map was focused on a yearlong project to upgrade 28 stops along one of the city's major corridors serving the southern part of the county, where the population is traditionally lower income and non-English speaking.

"This was one of our most neglected corridors in terms of stop amenities, characterized by high ridership and a very disenfranchised population. The project took a phased approach to upgrades to all 28 stops and involved closing some sidewalks," says Schaefer.

"Initially, it was suggested that we host an Excel-based solution on our website, which would show the current status at each stop. But we knew language barriers would be an issue in this part of the service area, so an interactive map seemed to make better sense. It's an intuitive way to describe events taking place when non-English-speaking riders may not know the names or spellings of a particular bus stop, but they may recognize the location on a map.

"The great thing about GIS is the ability to communicate live details through an online platform. I created a very basic app showing all impacted locations, what improvements were going to be made, a general time frame for completion, and a real-time indicator of events that would impact the rider experience."

This first web-based map was well received and led to WeGo's next use of online maps to effectively communicate with the public. As the agency prepared for a major route restructuring to accommodate changing mobility patterns during COVID-19, it still had the requirement to gather public input and comment. But getting public feedback during the pandemic was difficult—as Schaefer notes, in the early 2021 time frame, sending survey staff out for face-to-face engagement was still frowned upon. This led to the next online suite of interactive mapping, which was created to show the proposed changes.

"We had to reach a broad audience and wanted to identify where to target to get more responses. The proposed service changes had a lot of complicated concepts to get across—when you're talking about expanding span and frequency, and only on select routes, it's very difficult to effectively communicate those concepts on a static map."

"We advertised the story at targeted bus stops as well as our main transfer facility, but also provided direct links through social media platforms. The service changes were communicated through a series of individual maps showing span improvements by route, frequency changes by route, and a proposed new service that required feedback to determine final routing based on traffic generators along different alignment options we were considering. We also created ArcGIS Survey123 survey and dashboard to gather targeted feedback based on the main concepts described in the story. The dashboard helped us analyze results to determine our final recommendations to present to our board of directors."
 

"These outputs aren't complicated to construct, but the data we received during the outreach period allowed us to target our efforts strategically. Through ArcGIS Survey123 we were able to record ZIP codes of respondents that we could then visualize on a map where we should focus outreach activities to gain a representative response."

The uplift in engagement was impressive. Schaefer says that responses went from a typical 20–50 to around 270, and easily communicated to decision-makers based on the data points in the Esri dashboard. 

Next, Schaefer was able to show how GIS could be used to help define a new, more tailored service designed to reach different communities of need in their service area. Taking a data-driven approach, WeGo initiated an innovative service program called WeGo Link.

WeGo Link is a first/last-mile mobility-on-demand solution designed to help riders take better advantage of existing fixed-route service by providing individualized rides to the nearest leg of the fixed-route system. Those who reside within certain defined zones can call a transportation network company (Uber) or a local provider, Mobility Solutions, which provides wheelchair-accessible transportation. The service carries passengers between their front doors and bus stops on major service routes, which have 10-minute frequencies.

The initial identification of disadvantaged areas was achieved through Esri's ArcGIS Community Analyst using such propensity measures as zero-vehicle households, limited English proficiency, minority ethnic group, and low income. 
 

WeGo Link was designed to target specific disadvantaged areas to make public transit more accessible. Users input their address into an app created with ArcGIS Instant Apps and see if they qualify to use the service. 
 

The usability of the WeGo Link qualifying app caught the attention of the Authority's paratransit operatives. As Schaefer relates: "When presenting this application and its use to senior staff, our customer care team saw how something like this could improve their processes. They asked me to create an application for the paratransit team to allow them to enter an address which will give them the result of whether someone qualifies for our Access paratransit service, which is defined by our county boundary. Before, they would have to use Google Maps, which added a lot of time to their day-to-day. So in 15 minutes, they had their own qualifying app to use and are still using it today."

Soon word began to spread throughout the agency about what GIS could do. As Schaefer says, "There are a whole range of potential quick wins. It's just a case of identifying the use cases." Key initial consumers were the Planning Department and the Service Quality Department.

The agency's Service Quality Department takes a very data-driven approach to its work: "Adding GIS adds where, but it's not about just plugging in numbers, analyzing the data, and visualizing it; it's about coming up with solutions that improve our processes and, ultimately, the customer experience."

Because Schaefer's group can analyze large amounts of data, she relates that "We've become by default the Authority's big data department. Our servers and databases bring in a huge range of information—fare box data, real-time vehicle information, and so on—not to mention our triennial analysis of riders' origin-destination information, which enables a deeper spatial analysis. If we're picking up 100 people a day that are making the same mile walk to our current service, for instance, could a feeder route be supported to improve that experience?

"Accessing all of that and thinking in a more spatial way helps us to understand not just what's taking place on a route, but where along the route are these events taking place, and is there something we can do to create a more usable system? That's something I'm really excited about.

"A lot of what we do is figuring out what's not working for our customers. Again, we can take complaints, put them on a map, and identify hot spots—if someone is regularly being passed up, why? Is it overcrowding, or because the operator didn't see them? Is there an issue with that particular operator? We can drill down to see exactly what's happening and how often and then investigate in a more intentional way. Data received from individuals using their transit fare cards can be used to time-stamp and locate issues that we can then work with our Safety Department to address specific safety issues.

"Static maps just don't work in the same way."

While the Nolensville Corridor Project was an eye-opener in terms of what GIS could do, it nevertheless had some unique characteristics. It was a large project over a limited period. So once the project was finished, the interactive map could be retired. That understanding gave rise to the notion that interactive maps could also be used for much smaller initiatives. For example, WeGo has been doing of lot of shelter upgrades, and ArcGIS Online has supported public communication for these smaller projects as well.

As Schaefer relates: "Our engineering team has been a quick adopter of interactive mapping—they've been able to experience the benefits of project tracking and coordination with Metro departments through ArcGIS Online," says Schaefer, "but the more complex or detailed apps seem to be the shorter-lived. It's the quick wins that endure.”

"For instance, we added three new zones to WeGo Link in the last fall. Three more were added this past spring. The way the app was created makes it easy to keep up to date. I try to avoid duplicated efforts, so something that's readily scalable is ideal."

WeGo Link is still a relatively young program, but it continues to grow month over month. For example, a new zone was created to enable women in rural areas to access employment; another helps a not-for-profit organization that supports women who have been victims of domestic abuse.

"Often, we see a push for a fixed-route service, but fixed route is expensive," Schaefer states.

"Transit revenues took a substantial dip because of the pandemic, and we need to be very intentional about where we introduce new routes. We get regular requests for door-to-door service, and WeGo Link now provides a reasonable solution for those types of requests we weren't able to achieve before.

"As a program, it's one of the best things we've ever done—there are a lot of people and jobs we can connect without the costs of implementing fixed route."

It is this type of innovative thinking, together with solid data analysis with GIS, that has helped WeGo almost completely recover from pandemic levels of ridership and redesign its service offerings for a brighter future.