Passenger Counts in Onboard App

Passenger Counts in Onboard App allows an agency to gather counts of passengers boarding their vehicles by customizable categories, via the operator entering the information directly into the app while at a stop. Agencies who are not using the APC Connector product can have this feature enabled.

Configuration

To configure Passenger Counts in Onboard App, you'll simply have to provide Swiftly with a list of what passenger categories you would like to count (up to 8). Each category will count as a single boarding, so you should not use overlapping categories as this could result in double-counting boardings.

Counting Passengers

When a bus arrives at a stop, the operator should navigate to the Passenger Counts page by tapping the "Count" icon in the lower navigation menu.

Boardings: For each passenger who boards the bus, the bus operator should press one button corresponding to the category that passenger falls into. If they accidentally press a button too many times, they can use the "minus" button to reduce the count by one.

Alightings: For each passenger who exits the bus, the bus operator should press the "Pax. Off" button.

Reset: If every passenger has exited the bus, the operator can "swipe left" on the "Pax. Off" button to reveal the option to reset the count to zero - this will have the same effect as pressing "Pax. Off" enough times to account for all the people on board the bus.

Real Time Crowding

Agencies with Passenger Counts in Onboard App can get the Real Time Crowding feature, which includes display of crowding in Live Operations as well as inclusion in the GTFS-realtime data.

Historical Ridership Reports

Swiftly has a couple of datasets to understand Ridership analysis over a period of time: Passenger Counts and Boardings by Fare Type.

• Passenger Counts provides information about scheduled and observed Passenger counts data (Boardings and alightings) at stops for all routes or specified route(s).

• Boardings by Fare Type provides information about fare type boardings collected at every stop via the Onboard App for all routes or specified route(s).

Both datasets can be exported via APIs under the Ridership section of our API Guide.

FAQs

If a user enters a boarding in between two stops, how would that be counted in the report?
Any boarding that occurs between stops is counted towards the total for the next actual stop. Once the bus arrives at the next stop, the count reflects the information previously entered

How do you handle Passenger Counts when connectivity is lost at a certain stop? Do you keep the counts and add them to our system when the connection is reestablished?
Passenger Counts in Onboard App require connectivity in order to successfully record counts. If counts are recorded in a dead zone, they will not be included.

How does passenger counting behave when a vehicle is in the “performance unavailable”/”timing unavailable” state.

If a vehicle becomes unpredictable (usually because it’s not moving or very off-schedule), we do not show the passenger counting screen. Additionally if a passenger counts are entered as a vehicle is becoming unpredictable, they won't be counted.

Does passenger counting work for temporary stops along detours?

No, passenger counts are not associated with temporary stops in any situation.