Information collected by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), which serves the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, is helping it zero in on key messages like “since 2020 the average resident has access to 15 percent more jobs,” Scott Traum, WMATA manager for data and research, said during a recent panel discussion examining the agency’s data and messaging program. The event was organized and hosted by Via Transportation, a transit technology provider.
In the last five years, WMATA, like numerous other transit operators across the country, has been working to recapture ridership, and dig out of the COVID-19 pandemic slump that reshuffled commute and travel patterns built on the concept of shuttling workers from suburban housing locations to job centers. Remote work and a more 24-hour travel lifestyle have left transit answering to a new paradigm where riders want and require a wider cross-section of transit services and destinations.
Technology companies including Via and its subsidiary Remix, have partnered with WMATA to better understand how increased service will have downstream effects, by providing data related to what areas a person can access using transit that arrives within 30 minutes.
“We want to make sure that we’re getting people to important places, not just getting them farther for the sake of getting them farther,” Traum said, noting that one of Metro’s new metrics looks at how many jobs fall within what it calls “catchment areas” — generally, the region around a stop or station that its passengers come from.
“That number really starts to mean something, not just to our customers, but to the policymakers that are responsible for keeping our funding, and making these decisions,” Traum said.
WMATA has been making a number of changes to its bus and rail system, with an eye toward expanding service where it’s needed, a move that could grow both ridership and revenue. In 2022, the agency launched the long-awaited Silver Line extension to Washington Dulles International Airport — serving not just millions of airport users, but putting transit stations within five miles of the homes of 420,000 people, according to WMATA data.
In 2022, the agency used data to determine where it should reintroduce its all-day frequent bus service. Rather than bringing back all service lines just as they had been before the pandemic, “we decided to double down on frequency, in places where people are riding a lot,” Traum said.
WMATA has used data to improve frequency on 36 of its bus lines.
“And it’s on these lines, that is where our ridership has really grown the most over the past few years,” he said, indicating WMATA has also been adding tech features like bus signal priority to make trips go faster.
“When you have innovative solutions with really quality service design with the right data and technology, and you center on what matters to the riders, you get a stronger system,” Kelly McGurk, Via director of marketing, said during the panel. “If you design around what riders want and need, you can build trust and lead to real ridership momentum.”
More frequent service means shorter wait times at bus stops and train platforms. That translates into shorter travel times for the workers and others using the system, say officials. These are the kinds of real-world realities Metro focuses on when selling itself to riders or policymakers.
“So in that way we’ve been able to not only make these changes, but continue to talk about them in a way that is meaningful to folks,” Traum said. “And advocate for not only more changes, but advocate for more resources to show how important transit is to our community.”
