Does Wi-Fi on Transit Attract Riders?
by Jim Baker
Fall is here along with the usual flurry of trade shows, conferences and press releases. The autumn is also traditionally the season for technical pilots of one variety or another, and the transit industry is no exception. Interest in passenger Wi-Fi is growing, and the key driver is to increase ridership. But is Wi-Fi really increasing ticket sales, and how would the transit agency know?
All Aboard in Silicon Valley
Santa Clara Transportation Authority (VTA) announced back in October that it was trialing free Wi-Fi for passengers on the Express light rail service in the South Bay; interestingly, Wi-Fi was the number one request from passengers on the VTA feedback website. VTA transports technically savvy commuters in Silicon Valley, with its rail system passing by the offices of giants such as Cisco, Google and Samsung, and a journey on a train from one end of the rail network to the other can take an hour. Free Wi-Fi was seen as an added amenity to attract passengers, even in the age of the 3G/4G smart phone. Passengers will use free Wi-Fi in preference to their own cellular Internet service to avoid eating into their monthly data allowance. The VTA trial runs through the end of the year; if successful, the authority may consider expanding the Wi-Fi service across its fleet of 100 trains and more than 400 hundred buses. VTA plans to conduct a survey during the Wi-Fi login sequence to assess customer interest; it will also analyze system access to understand how many people used the service and what kind of traffic passed over the network. Technically it is possible to correlate Wi-Fi usage with ticket sales and passenger counter data over a specific time period to get a full picture of any impact Wi-Fi may have on ridership. Unwired will cover the VTA Wi-Fi pilot in more detail in a future article.
Texans Like Their Wireless
The latest transit authority to launch free wireless is VIA Metropolitan Transit in San Antonio, with a deployment across 30 buses and nine transit centers. The Wi-Fi hotspots connect via 3G and 4G networks, the latter being a reference to Sprint’s 4G network built and operated by Clearwire. According to VIA President Keith Parker, the deployment followed a one month trial in late 2009 that gauged interest level among passengers before the agency committed to a wider wireless roll-out. The hope was that free Wi-Fi would attract new riders who normally wouldn’t use public transportation. VIA has a track record of increased ridership; in 2009 the agency was ranked ninth in the US by Planetizen.com with an increase in transit usage of 15.1 percent between 2006 and 2008.
During the Wi-Fi trial last year, VIA announced on which bus routes Wi-Fi would be available in the run up to Christmas. For that pilot the agency used a consumer-grade Wi-Fi access point with built-in cellular connection known as a ‘MiFi.’ The downside of using a consumer device is (a) a maximum of just five users can use the connection simultaneously, and (b) the device does not support a splash screen where users can agree to terms and conditions, thus explicitly indemnifying the agency against any liabilities arising from misuse. Despite these rather significant shortfalls, VIA went ahead with the trial. It was clearly successful, as last month’s announcement of expansion to 39 locations shows.
What differentiates VIA from other Wi-Fi pilots I’ve come across is the use of a website survey to gather feedback from passengers during the trial.
Above – The VIA Metropolitan Transit Wi-Fi user survey.
Such data is crucial for agencies to understand whether Wi-Fi is being used by their passengers, and whether the system is working as planned. An online survey is a great way to get that feedback. Some onboard commercial-grade Wi-Fi systems allow for surveys to be displayed during the log-in sequence, with the passenger only seeing the survey the first time they use the service. Those systems also support a splash screen (known as a ‘captive portal’) where Wi-Fi users are directed when they log on to the Wi-Fi network.
Above – The Stagecoach Oxford Tube (UK) in-bus Wi-Fi splash screen.
When considering in-vehicle Internet technology for mass transit, agencies must plan how they are going to collect Wi-Fi usage data. It requires commercial in-vehicle router hardware and back-office software such as RADIUS AAA for authenticating users, storing MAC addresses of laptops and other devices used, tracking session time and length, and recording the amount of data used per client device. All this is key to understanding usage patterns, and thus the customer. Most in-vehicle Internet systems are connected to the Internet using cellular networks; the transit agency will likely be paying a monthly fee for that cellular data service, typically anywhere from $40-$60 per month. These subscriptions are usually capped at around 5GB per month; exceed that and expect a very large bill. A properly set up back-office solution can track data use and send an alarm to the system administrator when the use per train or bus approaches the monthly limit set by the cellular provider, and to cross-reference usage with monthly the cellular invoice.
Amtrak Free Wi-Fi Penetrates 39 Percent of Ridership
I’ve covered the long-distance inter-city Amtrak Acela rail service in the Unwired column before so lest I repeat myself, the Wi-Fi service between Boston and Washington, D.C. has proved extremely popular. Amtrak ran a three-month trial of free Wi-Fi in the spring of 2010 and more than 115,000 passengers logged on per month, roughly 39 percent of ridership. According to Matt Hardison, Amtrak head of customer service, Amtrak had ‘tremendous positive customer response’ to the AmtrakConnect Wi-Fi service aboard 20 trains and in six major stations, and that keeping it free would ‘support increased ridership growth’; Amtrak expects free Wi-Fi to drive ridership and increase revenues by $4.3 million by 2015. Seventy-six percent of passengers polled had a favorable or strongly favorable opinion of the service and with overall system performance. In March Amtrak subsequently issued a tender for nationwide roll-out of Wi-Fi on trains.
And Finally… Google Wi-Fi Buses
At the IT Roadmap Conference and Expo in San Francisco on November 3, Bruce Hahn, network architect at Google outlined the Wi-Fi system used aboard its Bay Area fleet of 50 shuttle buses. To get the maximum throughput from existing 3G networks, each bus has up to six or more modems in a cellular router, using multiple service providers to deliver always-on connectivity. While this is an interesting technical exercise, the cost of maintaining so many monthly subscriptions it is not practical for commercial transit bus operators, especially when Wi-Fi is free to passengers. While train installations do indeed use multiple modems, most on-bus Wi-Fi services use one modem; some use two where a vehicle might regularly pass out of coverage of the primary cellular provider. Although the bandwidth available on current 3G technologies — especially EV-DO — typically delivers less than 1Mbps to the bus, this is acceptable for most transit agencies who are offering a ‘best effort’ Wi-Fi service without performance guarantees (or end-user support). Getting sufficient bandwidth to trains and buses will get easier with the advent of 4G services in 2011 as Sprint, Clearwire and AT&T all move to technologies capable of delivering real-world speeds of above 5Mbps on a single 4G modem.
Ultimately, when considering passenger Wi-Fi transit agencies must treat the gathering of usage metrics on equal par as the speed of the cellular network; agencies’ RFPs need to detail this requirement so that the information is delivered to them by the contractor accurately and regularly. Only then can they truly understand whether Wi-Fi is working for them as well as it’s working for the passenger.
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Jim Baker is managing partner at Xenventure, a market strategy and private equity firm based in San Francisco and London. A C-level wireless industry veteran, Baker has been involved in many deployments of wireless technologies on passenger transportation worldwide and is a recognized industry expert on Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G convergence. He is chair of the Technology Committee at the Joint Council on Transit Wireless Communications which is developing a strategic plan for implementation of wireless technologies in mass transit. Contact Baker via LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter.