Swiftly, Inc.

🎉 Today, for Women's History Month and Transit Employee Appreciation Day, Swiftly Senior Account Manager Anna Biegalski recognizes Transportation Planner Mikaela Hiatt 🎉 "My path crossed with Mikaela Hiatt during our time at Remix by Via, and her passion for the transit planning industry is a delight to experience. She’s worked for a number of agencies in her career, with experience spanning from corridor studies and active transportation plans. Now, in her current role as a Transportation Planner at the Transportation Authority of Marin, she focuses on climate adaptation and the impacts on the Authority’s transportation system. "Working in transit is inherently service-oriented (no pun intended). For Mikaela, it’s a direct link to being of service to others in the world around us: 'People rely on the bus. Transit Planning is how we care for people in our community. Women provide multifaceted perspectives on everything from safety to accessibility to the rider experience. Sure, it might seem like just a bus. But it’s how we move, whether that’s to work, to school, to childcare, to our families and the people we love. There’s an innate sense of care that women bring to the transit space.'" Thank you to Mikaela and all the transit employees who keep communities moving every day!

For Women’s History Month, we’re spotlighting how women in the transit industry have impacted women at Swiftly. Today, Swiftly Account Executive Jacquelyn Broader 🎉 celebrates 🎉 Bibiana Kamler McHugh: “Today, accessing transit information in Transit, Google Maps, and so on is almost as commonplace as using light bulbs to light our homes. But it wasn’t always this way. General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS)—the data standard that makes public transit schedules compatible with sites like Google Maps—is a relatively recent innovation created in large part by Bibiana McHugh at Portland’s TriMet agency. “I had the opportunity to meet Bibiana in 2024 at a transportation conference. Admittedly, and embarrassingly, when I first met Bibiana I didn’t know she was the brains behind what is today’s industry standard. As Bibiana and I got to talking about my interest in public transit innovations, the conversation eventually rolled around to GTFS and why data standards are so key for interoperability and technology’s role in public transit. Bibiana not only took the time to explain the building blocks of GTFS to me, answer my questions about how it was built, but she also tracked down a blank piece of paper to literally draw out TriMet’s schedule pre- and post-GTFS. Something that’s stuck with me to this day—in addition to Bibiana's willingness to teach—was her motivation behind creating GTFS. Bibiana described the arduous process so humbly, and gave much of the accreditation to the team that supported her with very little attention paid to the fact that GTFS started as a passion project of hers because she knew it would make the industry and people’s lives better. “The desire to put in the work to do good by others is something I see a lot of in the transportation industry, especially in the women I’ve gotten to meet and work with. I have an endless list of women like Bibiana to thank, for spending extra time educating me and connecting me to peers who would later serve as mentors, colleagues, and friends. Especially in unprecedented times, may we all continue to take a page out of Bibiana’s book and invest in and hold each other up.” 🚍📍💞 Read Swiftly's interview with Bibiana here: https://lnkd.in/g_ytn2CT

How did they do it ⁉️ Last chance—Find out tomorrow from Tyler Means, AICP, Chief Mobility and Strategy Officer at KCATA, in our upcoming webinar: How data quality impacts service reliability and the rider experience 🗓️  March 11 | 10:00am PT 🔗 Register now to join, and we'll share the recording:  https://lnkd.in/gMXJjRh4

🚍 Where to find Swiftly next! Whether you’re looking to improve real-time transit data, optimize schedules, or enhance rider experience, we’d love to connect. 💻 Data Quality Webinar—Learn how agencies are tackling data challenges to improve RTPI and OTP 🇨🇦 OTE - Ontario Transportation Expo—Meet us in Toronto to explore the latest transit innovations and catch Jenn Van Geem's panel on Digital Transformation 📍 American Public Transportation Association Mobility Conference—Join Jonathan Simkin, Ritesh Warade, Natalie Fedie, Siena Guerrazzi, Mark Godin, Hazel Scher, David Hunt, Mitchell Stoops, Edgar Sanchez Larios, Stan Parkford and Bogdan Bogzeanu in Austin for conversations on the future of public transit Let’s talk transit! Check out https://lnkd.in/gXyHRrsm for more details and to schedule a time to meet up.

As Black History Month comes to a close, we'd like to highlight and celebrate 3 (of many, many) incredible Black people and organizations who have contributed so much to the world of transit! 📍 Dr. Gladys Mae West (b. 1930) is a mathematician who modeled the shape of the Earth and worked on satellite geodesy and other satellite measurements—which all contributed to the development of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and its improved accuracy. 🚃 Throughout her life, not only was Arcola Philpott (1913–1991) an accomplished pianist and a nurse, but in the 1940s, she was Los Angeles' first Black streetcar operator. ❤️ The Safe Bus Company (1926–1972) was formed in 1926 to support underserved Black communities during segregation. By 1968, it was the largest Black-owned and operated transportation company in the world. Thanks to them—and so many more—transit is safer, more inclusive, and more reliable.

Transit agencies face many different challenges to deliver reliable service, such as off-route vehicles, operator emergencies, hardware issues, or simply early and late trips. Operations teams have been forced to respond to issues reactively after receiving a rider complaint or a call from an operator. 🎉 Today, we’re excited to announce Issues in Live Operations, a new tool to surface problems within the network by displaying routes with the most real-time issues. 🎉 Learn how Live Operations now empowers teams to identify, prioritize, and resolve issues proactively in a new blog post from our Chief Product Officer, Meredith Bordoni: https://lnkd.in/gNe3y_Uh

Swiftly and Transit are happy to announce that the California Department of Transportation's Integrated Travel Project (Cal-ITP) has offered their support for the ETA Accuracy Benchmark. We are proud to continue the work of fostering consistency and transparency in the measurement of such a critical metric in transit, and we welcome Cal-ITP's support. “Cal-ITP supports the development of data quality performance metrics to help move this industry towards better transit data quality. Transit agencies large and small as well as vendors can use metrics such as the ETA Accuracy Benchmark to measure data quality in a standardized fashion. These metrics can help vendors create higher quality products that achieve better data quality. This improved data quality will result in better functioning systems for transit agencies and an improved rider experience.” — Evan Siroky, Transit Data Quality Branch Manager, Caltrans Read more about the benchmark here: https://lnkd.in/gSAbuChs

For transit agencies, efforts to improve on-time performance (OTP) rely on accurate, complete, and accessible data. Without confidence in data, it becomes difficult to track performance, adjust service, and improve reliability. At Valley Metro RPTA, a focus on data accuracy, completeness, and accessibility led to measurable improvements including a 10% improvement system-wide on OTP with key routes improving by 25% 👏 👏 👏 . Join us on March 11th for a live webinar featuring Michael Pal, Chief Transportation Officer at Valley Metro, as he shares how his team is leveraging better data to improve OTP and service reliability. 🔗 Register today! https://lnkd.in/gMXJjRh4

Real-time passenger information has made huge strides in the transit industry, but there's still work to be done according to findings from our 2025 State of Public Transit report. Taking a snapshot of agencies today, 70% face challenges communicating and explaining any missed service to riders. Agencies that deliver seamless information about missed service build trust and ridership, but communication challenges and issues with transit data stand in the way of fully informed riders. Access the full 2025 State of Public Transit report—featuring insights from over 300+ agencies on a range of themes impacting the industry—and discover actionable solutions to improve rider trust: https://lnkd.in/g8hpX4ad