The City of Santa Monica seeks proposals from qualified firms to provide a comprehensive software-as-a-service system that will allow the city of Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus (BBB) to improve the customer experience in every interaction with its service.
Although a variety of third-party apps are available which provide arrival predictions using BBB’s public General Transit Feed Specification real-time (GTFS-rt) feed, it is important that BBB proactively provide its customers real-time bus arrival information that is consistently the same, across a variety of communication channels rather than having customers rely on various sources that may each provide slightly different predictions due to variances in algorithms and/or prediction methodology.
A significant minority of BBB customers do not have a smartphone or prefer to get their bus arrival data by other means such as phone, text, computer, or electronic signs at bus stops. The ideal solution would make accurate real-time bus arrival information easily accessible to virtually all current and potential BBB customers however they may prefer to get the data. The solution would also disseminate static schedule data (GTFS) via maps when appropriate and would be the single source of truth for BBB real-time locations and schedule data.
In addition, providing a means to automatically disseminate real-time service alerts across a wide range of communication channels would improve the customer experience by helping to reduce customer confusion and frustration about planned and unplanned disruptions. An automated alert-generation solution using data ingested from BBB’s existing CAD-AVL and scheduling systems would help BBB staff better serve customer needs.
Please review and respond to the RFP at the following link:
https://procurement.opengov.com/portal/santa-monica-ca/projects/273609
