Conquer Delays with
Intelligent Disruption
Management
When disruptions occur, an
intelligent planning tool
empowers you to increase
your responsiveness and
improve the punctuality,
reliability, and effi ciency of
your operations.
By Pete Nelson
T
22 | Mass Transit | MassTransitmag.com | FEBRUARY 2018
decisions have been communicated
swift ly and appropriately. You
may be able to use disparate tools
to adapt your plans but they are
not likely to also be able to provide
real-time updates to dispatchers
and ultimately passengers as well.
Using multiple systems pieced together,
as many transit agencies
do, can cause communication
delays when information needs
to be entered manually from one
system to the next. Not only does
this hold up communication, it
can also result in many other errors
along the way.
When you have the right planning
tool in place, your accurate
real-time updates can be shared
promptly and directly to passengers
via digital signage and mobile
apps.
Feedback Actual
Data to Improve the
Planning Process
One key to minimizing the eff ects
of disruption is having good planning
data and visibility based on
historical information. A powerful
planning tool can predict the
ramifi cations of a specifi c scenario
and also provide strategic decision
support to help you move forward.
Planning tools drive even more
value when actual data is analyzed
and fed back into the process to
further refi ne planning decisions.
Th is ability to gather, store,
and then take action based on
historical information is essential.
Using a planning system to
analyze characteristics and attributes
of disruptions determines
what happened, and most importantly,
why it happened. Th is
information allows you to more
accurately prepare for, if not prevent,
future disruptions.
Even the best planning tools
cannot completely prevent disruptions
and delays on their
own, but they do empower you
to increase your responsiveness
and improve the punctuality, reliability,
and effi ciency.
MassTransitmag.com/12378756
Quintiq
WHEN DISRUPTIONS
occur, an
intelligent
planning tool
automatically
takes into
account the new
circumstances
and recalculates.
RANSIT SYSTEM OPERAtors
know from experience
that service disruptions are
inevitable, and legacy systems
operators in particular know
this very well. What starts as
a minor disruption can have
major consequences as the eff ects
trickle down, causing complications
to arise rapidly.
Anyone relying on public transit
in New York City this summer
is most likely familiar with what
Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the
“Summer of Hell,” referring to the
period between July and September
when travelers were faced with disruptions
from emergency repairs at
Penn Station and even a track fi re.
Adapt Your Plan
Depending on the severity of the
disruption, you may need to bring
in other resources. Instead of leaving
this decision solely to your
planning team, you can provide
them the information they need
to fi nd the best resolution with a
robust planning system.
When disruptions occur, an
intelligent planning tool automatically
takes into account the new
circumstances and recalculates.
Older systems may have stored
historical information but lack
advanced analytics required for
real-time recalculations.
Adapting a timetable, even
with the best plan of action, could
potentially require many levels of
approval before it can become offi
cial and public. Using an automated
planning tool quickly gives
supervisors a look at the best potential
options for moving forward
and lets them see the likely repercussions
of each change.
Aft er you have explored your
options and received approval for
the changes you will make based on
your current circumstance, you’ll
need to update your timetables
while minimizing negative impacts.
Communicate
Once you’ve used your planning
tool to evaluate the best way to
manage the inevitable disruption
and adapted your timetable
to accommodate the new plan,
you will need to make sure all
Pete Nelson is a
solutions architect
with Quintiq.
/MassTransitmag.com
/12378756