T3 Webinar Overview

Beyond Scheduling: Transit Scheduling and Operations IT: Lessons Learned

Date:   May 31, 2012
Time:  2:00 PM – 3:30 PM ET
Cost:  All T3 webinars are free of charge
PDH:  1.5   View PDH Policy

T3 Webinars are brought to you by the ITS Professional Capacity Building Program (ITS PCB) at the U.S. Department of Transportation's (US DOT) ITS Joint Program Office, Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA). Reference in this webinar to any specific commercial products, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm or corporation name is for the information and convenience of the public, and does not constitute endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by U.S. Department of Transportation.

Background

As IT developments have advanced rapidly in the last 20 years, so have the capabilities of transit properties, particularly the use of automated scheduling tools. IT-based systems for minimizing vehicle counts and cutting operator runs are now commonplace in the industry. The next steps in this evolution are modules which can be deployed to expand from purely service planning and scheduling functions to other transit departments, chiefly operations. This webinar explores issues associated with the procurement and assimilation of large-scale IT projects at five transit agencies in the Pacific Northwest; King County Transit in Seattle will be the featured transit property during this webinar. Both the risks and payoffs are substantial in large-scale IT projects. A common IT platform across departments has benefits, such as increasing data integrity and reducing development costs. Some of the challenges are substantial customization and complicated data integration. However, the endgame for many transit agencies today is an integrated IT platform for scheduling, operations, payroll, maintenance, and employee performance and discipline. The goal of this webinar is to provide a roadmap highlighting the risks and benefits of large-scale technical projects and the associated business culture transformations.

Webinar presenters are Ray Burgess, King County Metro Transit; Kranthi Balaram, Chicago Transit Authority; and Mark Patzloff, Chicago Transit Authority.

The webinar will be hosted by Terry Regan of the United States Department of Transportation, John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center.

Target Audience

Public transit stakeholders who are interested in learning about the benefits and challenges of expanding their IT capabilities from systems that only manage schedules, to the implementation of a common IT platform that supports daily vehicle operations, personnel planning, payroll, operator reward and discipline, and self-service features.

Learning Objectives

At the end of the webinar, participants will be able to:

• Enhance managing the procurement of large-scale transit IT projects.
• Share lessons learned about the assimilation of large-scale IT deployments.
• Explore how to make better use of IT standards.
• Improve the ability to address IT challenges for both large and small transit agencies.

Host

Terry Regan, US DOT John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center

Terry Regan is a project manager for the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, MA. He oversees the U.S. DOT's ITS Joint Program Office's (JPO) ITS Peer to Peer Program and is currently conducting research on governance issues for the ITS JPO's Connected Vehicles program. In addition, Terry oversees the Volpe Center's research efforts for FHWA's Office of Innovative Program Delivery. This includes developing capacity building materials focused on innovative financing techniques, including the development of educational materials on Public Private Partnerships (P3s).

Prior to joining the John A. Volpe Center, Terry worked at the Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. He holds an MPA from the Harvard University and a BA in Political Science from the Rhodes College.

Presenters

Ray Burgess, King County Metro Transit

Ray Burgess is a Project Manager in the Transit division of King County in Seattle, Washington. One of his current roles is support of the HASTUS scheduling and operations management system for both bus and rail operations. Ray works with software customizations, application upgrades, training, user access, and interfaces to other transit systems.

Ray led the project that added operations support to the HASTUS system that had previously been used only for route scheduling. Ray came to King County Metro Transit in 2004 after over 30 years of systems development, implementation, and support in multiple industries. Ray holds a B.S. degree from Weber State University in Computer Science.

Kranthi Balaram, Chicago Transit Authority

Kranthi Balaram works as Senior Project Manager - IT, in the Program Management and Technology Department of Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). He is a results-oriented professional with 14 years of experience in project management, client management, product development, process improvement, and software life cycle management. In his recent role at CTA, he has successfully managed the implementation of the Hastus suite of products used at CTA by the Bus and Rail Scheduling departments and by Bus Operations for end-to-end automation of pick processes.

Before working for CTA, Kranthi has worked both as a project manager and product manager and demonstrated technical leadership in organizations focused in business domains of automation, healthcare, pharmaceutical, public transportation, and imaging and information technology.

Kranthi possesses a mix of strong project management, technical leadership, and product management skills which is invaluable for today's IT organization. Kranthi holds a (B.E) Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering from Bangalore University, Certification in Project Management from the University of California - Berkley, is an active PMP certified professional from PMI, and holds a Certified Scrum Master from Scrum Alliance.

Mark Patzloff, Chicago Transit Authority

Mark Patzloff is the Project Manager for Scheduling Technology and Development in the Scheduling Division of the Chicago Transit Authority. His current role is to support bus and rail with the Hastus scheduling software on issues such as customization, reporting features, application upgrades, training, security, and user access. Mark came to CTA's Strategic Planning group in 2001 after fifteen years in the airline industry where his work experience involved international route planning, market development, and maintenance and fleet planning.

Locally, he has been active with Transport Chicago as a conference presenter, co-chair and steering committee member, and is currently completing an M.A. at Northwestern University in Public Policy and Administration with an emphasis on policy analysis and transportation. Mr. Patzloff holds an M.B.A. in Marketing and M.I.S. from the University of Minnesota, and a B.A. from St. John's University (MN).