National Express Transit Blog

For businesses, agencies, and organizations which rely on vehicles for moving people or cargo, making service calls, or delivering and picking up cargo, fleet management is a key element for effective and cost-efficient operations. Fleet management services, which can be handled in-house or contracted to a fleet and asset management company, can include a number of different functions, including vehicle maintenance, vehicle financing and acquisition, optimizing fuel efficiency, managing driver behavior, and heading up safety efforts and legal compliance.

For many transit riders, knowing that their bus or light rail will arrive on time both at the beginning of their trip and at their destination can be a huge factor in choosing their mode of transportation, as school classes, work, sports practice, and games, as well as social gatherings all have scheduling expectations. Nobody wants to be late for their commitments, nor do they want to wait overly long for their return trip, so improving on-time performance in a transit service is one way to improve rider satisfaction and potentially increase ridership. Here are a few general directions to head in for improving on-time performance.

Paratransit services are a vital element of modern mobility for many people, who rely on them to get to work, to school, or to medical appointments and more. However, like other areas in public transit today, the paratransit sector is also facing a number of challenges that will need to be met with creative and effective responses in order to remain useful and relevant in 2018 and beyond.

One of the key elements of any successful operation is a great training program, because with the proper training, employees will have the right skills to allow them to do their jobs well, while also knowing what to do (or not to do) in any given situation. A good training program also gives those individuals the confidence to take care of customers quickly and efficiently, and when it comes to call center productivity, with potentially heavy call volumes and often short time constraints, having top-notch training for call center agents is vital to your transit company's operations. Here are a few training tips for improving call center productivity and efficiency.

In order to increase ridership on public transit in the age of the car, agencies need to be willing to explore a number of different approaches. Some of these tactics may be used on the back end of the operations, such as scheduling and route-setting, some on the customer-facing processes, some on the marketing and communications side, and some on the infrastructure and facilities end. Like many aspects of life and business, there is probably no one magic pill that will cure low ridership, but rather a mix of strategies and tactics that can all work together to boost ridership.