Harnessing the Power of AI for Improved Transit Outcomes
MV Transportation has made developing and implementing AI-based solutions that enhance customer experience, improve operations and reduce costs a centerpiece of its market leading innovation strategy. Since early 2024, we have been investing in AI-based solutions to benefit our customers, and our initial successes have paved the way for our current, far broader efforts. As an example, we turned a major workforce challenge – vehicle operator turnover – into a blueprint for stronger retention, compliance, safety, customer service and long-term business impact through a first of its kind.
“What the MV Transportation Data, Analytics and AI team have done by pulling data from spreadsheets, legacy systems, even people’s heads and turning it into something structured and highly impactful has been a game changer. We’ve figured out how to utilize disparate data sources to create an AI-based platform that drives measurable and significant business results.”
– Stephanie Doughty, VP of Professional Services, MV Transportation
Game-Changing Results
50% improvement in year-over-year turnover rates for one year attrition
Significant decrease in safety-related incidents due to safer, higher-tenured drivers
Improved customer experience and operational consistency due to reduced driver turnover and better attendance.
Self-Improving system that gets smarter and more accurate over time with every additional element of data the system consumes
Cultural transformation: by reducing turnover and underscoring our commitment to our front-line teammates, local culture has continued to improve, fostering a team-focused culture of collaboration focused on the best possible passenger experience
Looking Forward: Our Roadmap for
New and Innovative AI Based Solutions
Fueled by the success of this turnover initiative and other early efforts, our 12-month solutions roadmap is filled with additional initiatives to improve safety, enhance the passenger experience and increase service productivity – while reducing costs for our clients. A few of the exciting solutions we have on our AI Roadmap include:
Transit Design, Planning, & Simulation
Data-driven restructuring of services across fixed route, paratransit, and microtransit to better match actual demand, cost realities (and challenges!), equity goals, and operational constraints. Enables MV and our clients to rapidly reimagine their transit service, considering historical and predicted future events, such as special events, traffic patterns, weather, and census data. Redesign transit services to achieve service and cost optimization in hours rather than weeks.
Dispatch Agent
Near Real-Time AI agents that spot issues and prompt dispatchers while there is still time to implement corrective action, protecting the service and preserving the passenger experience. Conversational AI can also be utilized to simulate changes and predict outcomes. These agents will help improve operations, improve customer service, and realize some of the benefits of modern platforms.
Call Center Empowered AI
Implementation of “Human-Like ” AI Call Center Agents integrated with legacy systems, enabling improved speed to answer, quality, cost and customer satisfaction. These agents will be able to perform creation of new reservations, change reservations, cancel reservations, and provide “Where’s My Ride” functionality. Over time these agents will be able to perform trip negotiations, suggest subscriptions, perform outgoing calls/texts to confirm rides, and answer frequently asked questions, where the client supports such functionality.
Dynamic Scheduling and Routing
Building on the two previous initiatives, MV expects to be able to integrate with Legacy Platforms to enable near real-time dynamic scheduling and routing within Legacy systems, with the ability to automate and simplify changes based on the reality of the challenges dispatchers face every day.
The above innovative efforts to benefit our clients and passengers are an excellent example of the major investments we have been making during our three-year journey to the New MV. In addition to significant improvements in operations through the best talent in the industry implementing our proprietary MV Way operating system and major investments in safety training, we have built an innovation engine through our outstanding technology team. As excited as we are about these developments, we are even more excited about what we will be able to deliver in the months and years ahead, as our commitment to continual improvement drives further improvements and innovations for the benefit of our passengers and clients.