How is my vanpool program doing? Is ridership trending up or down? How many routes are pending? MagicBus’s vanpool metrics dashboard helps you answer fundamental and next-level questions about your program performance, as well as give you the exact data needed for NTD reporting.
“What gets measured, gets done”.
We love this quote by management guru Peter Drucker.
Most vanpool organizations capture attendance data from riders on a monthly basis for reporting purposes, but only 10% of organizations that we’ve surveyed have access to on-demand data that provide transparency on daily ridership and utilization that allows the organization to be proactive rather than reactive.
MagicBus has developed a vanpool metrics dashboard that provides real-time data and insights on vanpool program performance for our B2B and B2G customers. This post explains how data collected by MagicBus is processed and turned into the dashboard – first displayed in the main page, then aggregated and processed into the correct format for National Transit Database (NTDB or NTD) annual and monthly reporting. The dashboard is interactive, with the ability to select custom date ranges, view data on a fleet-wide level or drill down to specific vans.
What can you do with this data?
Understand overall ridership trends and compare to other transportation modes
- What does vanpool ridership in absolute numbers look like? How does it compare to the previous month? Is it trending up or trending down? Why?
- How often are riders riding every week or month? Has it changed from pre-COVID levels due to new flexible work schedules?
- Is part-time ridership growing? When (days of the week) is the need the greatest? Are there specific routes that are more popular among this set of riders?
Analyze rider acquisition & retention and determine where to invest next in marketing & outreach efforts
- How many new vanpools are being created? Where are they going? Which employers should I reach out to get support on outreach efforts?
- Are first-time riders converting to part-time or full-time riders?
- Which promotion generated the most number of new first-time riders?
Analyze efficiency in vehicle operations
- What does my vehicle utilization look like? Is there spare capacity? Is it being underutilized?
- How can I consolidate vans that are low on ridership or split vans with routes of higher demand?
What are the metrics in the dashboard?
Passenger Trips
In accordance with public transit industry convention, passenger trips is our primary ridership metric, where each time a passenger boards a vanpool vehicle, this is reported as one unlinked passenger trip. To get a better handle on who is riding, we break this metric down into:
- Trips taken by full time riders – count of trips taken by any rider who is a full time vanpool member, and the membership could be purchased from our partners or from MagicBus.
- Trips taken by part time riders – count of trips taken by any rider who booked rides through the MagicBus app on a part-time or one-off basis.
- Trips taken by first time riders – count of trips taken by first-time riders, who can be either full time or part time.
Ride Frequency
Month-to-date histogram that shows the frequency for riders taking trips 0-10 times, 10-20 times, 20-30 times, 30-40 times, or 40+ times.
Average Van Ridership
Average number of full time, part time, and first time riders on a per van per trip basis, in time series format.
Average Van Ridership by Day of Week
Average number of full time, part time, and first time riders on a per van per trip basis, averaged by day of week.
Number of routes
- Crowdsourcing – defined as routes that we are have a few interested riders, but not enough to tilt to a vanpool yet, and we are actively acquiring riders through marketing and outreach efforts
- Active – routes that are operating at least once per week
- Inactive – routes that are temporarily paused
Vehicle Utilization
The number of seats occupied out of the total available seat capacity for all active routes.
Van Drill Down
For all the vans in your fleet, sort to see which van has the highest/lowest average full time riders, part time riders, first time riders, trips, and utilization.
NTD S-10 and MR-20 reports
We’ve simplified NTD reporting by aggregating and rendering data formatted for the National Transit Database that’s required to receive federal vanpool subsidies. The vanpoolers themselves no longer need to assume the responsibility of manual bookkeeping, and you get more real-time and accurate data.
Note: Even though the S-10 is a report submitted annually reflecting on the entire year’s performance, we provide you the year-to-date information so you can stay up-to-date.
Need additional data other than the metrics in the dashboard?
Just let us know and we will work with you to understand your needs! Besides the standard data in the metrics dashboard, we can create custom reports such as analyzing marketing conversion rates, vanpool payments, and customer feedback to continuously find ways to improve the customer experience and get more riders for your program.
