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Urban Transportation Associates Improves Public Transit Service Nationwide with SPSS Predictive Analytics SoftwareCHICAGO --(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 (News - Alert) 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 (News - Alert)) 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. |
