Urban Transportation Associates Improves Public Transit Service Nationwide with SPSS Predictive Analytics Software
August 10 2009 - 8:00AM
Business Wire
Worldwide, public transportation agencies face a barrage of
challenges – cuts in public transit funding, rising energy costs,
pressure from environmental groups to ‘go green,’ and uncertain gas
prices. To improve efficiency of bus and train operations and
better serve the public, Urban Transportation Associates (UTA)
employs sophisticated Predictive Analytics Software (PASW®) from
SPSS Inc. (Nasdaq: SPSS), the leading global provider of Predictive
Analytics software and solutions.
UTA is a 20-year old transportation consulting agency working
with more than 80 North American public transit agencies, including
SEPTA (Philadelphia), MDT (Miami), MUNI (San Francisco), CMTA
(Austin), LYNX (Orlando), DART (Dallas), MARTA (Atlanta), AC
Transit (Oakland), and MBTA (Boston). The organization uses the
world’s leading statistical software suite, PASW Statistics
(formerly SPSS Statistics) to improve public transit systems by
evaluating the quality and productivity of existing service.
Tom Kowalski, president of UTA, said, “Public transportation
affects millions of people everyday and, therefore, accurate
information on transit ridership and the overall system is vital to
improve efficiency of operations and better serve the public. SPSS
Predictive Analytics technology is the data microscope for agencies
to understand and interpret areas of strength or weakness in
transit operations to support or justify necessary changes in
service.”
UTA developed a mobile data acquisition system called Automatic
Passenger Counting (APC) that consists of multiple sensors placed
on a transit vehicle, such as a bus or train. This system collects
a wide range of operational data, including ridership, and records
events such as bus stop frequency, run times, bicycle rack usage,
wheel chair lift cycles, and passenger boarding and disembarking.
Each recorded event is tagged with a latitude and longitude from
the embedded GPS system in the APC.
Using PASW Statistics, UTA analyzes information on ridership and
provides the information to transit managers, planners and
schedulers as key insight into rider usage, traffic patterns,
service scheduling and resource allocation to optimize and forecast
transit demand. Public transportation agencies use this information
to understand where to increase bus or train service to alleviate
overcrowding, or where to eliminate routes due to a lack of
ridership.
For example, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority
(MARTA), the ninth-largest system in the United States, operating a
multi-modal system with over 130 bus routes and daily ridership of
nearly 500,000, relies heavily on UTA and SPSS Predictive Analytics
technology when conducting analysis to improve system efficiencies.
MARTA utilizes UTA data from PASW Statistics for numerous types of
analysis, including service assessments, route productivity
reports, bus stop utilization, spatial data accuracy, route and
trip-level ridership activity, and customized ridership
reports.
Tonya Saxon, transit system planning analyst in MARTA’s Office
of Transit System Planning, said, “MARTA has made huge strides in
improving system efficiency and effectiveness by using PASW
Statistics and UTA data, resulting in benefits to both the
Authority and our passengers. We are able to effectively target
which bus routes most need improvement when we change service, and
we are able to better monitor and identify which routes need an
increase in service levels.”
Jack Noonan, SPSS chairman, president and CEO, said, “From
healthcare to retail to finance to transportation, all industries
are benefitting from the use of SPSS Predictive Analytics
technology to improve business processes. Companies like Urban
Transportation Associates, who understand the value of extracting
knowledge from data, are at the forefront of ensuring that better
decisions are made and the best actions are taken on a consistent,
repeatable basis.”
Availability
The entire portfolio of SPSS Predictive Analytics Software –
data collection, statistics, modeling, and deployment – is
available by calling 1-800-543-2185.
About UTA
UTA, located in Cincinnati, Ohio, is a firm specializing in the
production and application of Automatic Passenger Counting (APC)
systems. UTA APC system includes on-board sensors, GPS vehicle
location subsystem, a rugged Central Processing Unit (CPU), along
with a comprehensive software capability that produces a variety of
analytic reports/plots that present the performance of the transit
system in a variety of spatial or temporal resolutions.
UTA is recognized as the firm that has pioneered APC technology
in the U.S. transit market by demonstrating that APC technology can
operate at high performance levels in the often-harsh operating
environment of transit. UTA is the most experienced provider of
fully integrated APC hardware and software systems that
consistently and routinely meet the analytic objectives of transit
users. UTA APC users realize a significant return on the APC
investment in the form of reduced costs of data collection/analysis
along with improved transit service productivity and quality. For
more information, please visit http://www.utatransit.net/.
About SPSS Inc.
SPSS Inc. is a leading global provider of Predictive Analytics
software and solutions. The Company’s complete portfolio of
Predictive Analytics Software (PASW) products – data collection,
statistics, modeling and deployment – captures people’s attitudes
and opinions, predicts outcomes of future customer interactions,
and then acts on these insights by embedding analytics into
business processes. SPSS Solutions address interconnected
business objectives across an entire organization by focusing on
the convergence of analytics, IT architecture and business
process. Commercial, government and academic customers
worldwide rely on SPSS technology as a competitive advantage in
attracting, retaining and growing customers, while reducing fraud
and mitigating risk. Founded in 1968, SPSS is headquartered in
Chicago, Illinois. For more information, please visit
www.spss.com.
Spss Inc. (MM) (NASDAQ:SPSS)
Historical Stock Chart
From May 2024 to Jun 2024
Spss Inc. (MM) (NASDAQ:SPSS)
Historical Stock Chart
From Jun 2023 to Jun 2024