CrewFoundry
Transit Operator Extraboard and Run Cover Board
The report-time board: open runs by report time, extraboard operators in rotation order, and license, medical card, rest and vehicle checks before a run is offered.
Works with MoveTheWheels
A day in the life
The story behind the solution
A Tuesday of sick calls, a tripped charger and a stalled rail line
Danielle oversees bus and rail operations, maintenance and customer service for an authority running about 280 buses from two depots, the Millbrook light rail line and public chargers at three park-and-ride lots. A third of the Kestrel depot's buses are battery-electric. The Tuesday below is fictional, but anyone who has worked a transit operations floor will recognize every hour of it.
Tuesday, 4:02 a.m.
Nine sick calls before the first report time
Marcus Bell, the dispatcher at Kestrel, has nine absences on the call-in line, and the first open run reports at 4:52. The extraboard is a clipboard in rotation order. He knows Aino Lindqvist's medical card runs out this week but not which day, Mateo Ruiz has not finished articulated-bus training, and Dayo Nwosu signed off a late run at 12:40 a.m. By 4:45 Marcus has held down two operators for overtime out of turn and still has a Route 40 run uncovered. It pulls out twenty-five minutes late.
How this is solved: Open runs at 4 a.m. and an extraboard running short4:40 a.m.
A charger that tripped at 1:12
Priya Raman, the night yard supervisor, walks the electric lane and finds bus 2214 at 38 percent. Charger 14 tripped on a ground fault at 1:12 a.m.; the vendor portal shows it, but nobody on nights watches that portal. Bus 2214 is on a block that runs past 9 p.m., and the charging plan is a spreadsheet built to keep the depot under its power limit. Dispatch hears about the swap to a diesel bus from the operator at the gate. Across town, two public chargers at the Eastfield park-and-ride have shown unavailable since Saturday.
How this is solved: Electric buses plugged in overnight but not ready for their block7:20 a.m.
A ramp that will not deploy
On Route 40, bus 1987's wheelchair ramp will not deploy with a rider waiting at the stop. The operator calls it in, a road call truck goes out and the next bus is fifteen minutes away. At the shop, maintenance manager Kwame Asante faces a whiteboard with 23 buses out of service, four buses past their mileage inspection because odometer readings were keyed in late, a tray of paper defect cards and two electric buses waiting on the one high-voltage-qualified mechanic on shift. It is the third ramp failure on bus 1987 this month, but nothing on the whiteboard says so.
How this is solved: Ramp failures, defect cards and too few spares at pull-out8:04 a.m.
The Millbrook Line stops at Elm Street
An overhead wire fault stops trains between Elm Street and Wharf Street at the height of the peak, and rail control asks for a bus bridge. Bus dispatch needs eight buses and eight operators in the middle of pull-out and starts phoning both depots. The customer information team writes the alert three times, for the website, the app and social media, and each describes the Canal Market shuttle stop differently. Within twenty minutes the chat queue passes a hundred messages, most asking the same three questions.
How this is solved: A suspended rail segment, a bus bridge and riders left guessing1:30 p.m.
A line out the door for reduced fares
The line at the downtown customer service center reaches the door. Most people are there for reduced fares: seniors with photo IDs, riders with disabilities carrying certification forms, students with enrollment letters. Some are back for a second time because a page was missing. Staff key applications into a spreadsheet and print cards at the counter. Recertification letters went out late this quarter, and riders are finding out at the farebox that their pass has lapsed. A fare inspector calls the office to ask whether a card is still valid.
How this is solved: Reduced-fare applications stuck on paper and in the queue5:00 p.m.
Why did missed trips go up?
Rosa Ibrahim, the planning analyst, is building next week's board packet, and the monthly service and safety figures for the agency's federal and state funders are due Friday. On-time performance comes from one export, missed trips from dispatch logs with half the cause codes blank, road calls from the maintenance spreadsheet, charger uptime from the vendor portal and ridership from the fare system. When Danielle asks why missed trips rose in September, whether it was operator shortages, road calls or the Millbrook Line closures, Rosa says she needs another day to find out.
How this is solved: Board and funder numbers rebuilt by hand every month
None of this is unusual; it is an ordinary weekday for a transit operator at full stretch. The challenges below show how Burdenoff products are designed to share one record from the first sick call to the board packet, so Danielle's team can start the next morning knowing which runs are covered, which buses are ready and what riders are being told.
