City Council
Report
City Council Meeting: January 24, 2023
Agenda Item: 5.D
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To: Mayor and City Council
From: Edward F King, Director, Department of Transportation, Finance & Administrative Services
Subject: Approval of Contract with 9280-0366 Quebec Inc., dba Transit for Project to Implement Anonymous and Recurring Digital Intercept Survey to Capture Customer Sentiment for FTA's Enhancing Innovative Mobility (EMI) Demonstration Program Award of Grant Funds
Recommended Action
Staff recommends that the City Council:
1. Adopt a finding of categorical exemption pursuant to Section 15306 (Class 6 Information Collection) of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines.
2. Authorize the City Manager to negotiate and execute an agreement with 9280- 0366 Quebec Inc., dba Transit, a Montreal, Canada-based company, in an amount not to exceed $350,448 for three years, to develop a custom digital survey that will allow Big Blue Bus customers using the Transit smartphone app to better understand where Big Blue Bus can improve the customer experience.
This recommended award is made as an exception to the competitive bidding process pursuant to 2.24.250 (b and f).
3. Authorize budget changes as outlined in the Financial Impact & Budget Actions section of this report.
Summary
The City of Santa Monica’s Department of Transportation, Big Blue Bus division (BBB), has provided real-time bus location and arrival information to their customers via smartphone apps since 2015. Five years ago, 9280-0366 Quebec Inc., dba Transit, became BBB’s official trip-planning and real-time bus location smartphone app partner.
In August 2022, staff was informed that BBB was the recipient of an award of $330,432 from the Federal Transportation Administration (FTA) FY21 Enhanced Mobility 2 of 5
Innovation (EMI) Competitive Funding Opportunity. The EMI program advances emerging technologies, strategies, and innovations in passenger-centric mobility. The grant was approved specifically to fund a project in which BBB would partner with Transit to develop a custom digital survey to allow its customers to provide quick and easy anonymous feedback to the agency before, during, and at the end of their trip, coupled with real-time travel data from the existing app.
This feature would allow BBB and one other agency participating in the project, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), to learn from customers how to improve their transit experience from beginning to end and make focused adjustments to their service delivery at every stage of the trip, ultimately increasing customer satisfaction and ridership.
Staff seeks authority to enter into an agreement with Transit to develop, pilot, and launch the custom digital survey feature for an amount not to exceed $350,448, with $330,432 funded by the FTA EMI grant and a $20,016 local match from the City of Santa Monica.
WMATA will also be responsible for a local match and Transit App will contribute in-kind services as their local match to the FTA grant. However, these portions of the project budget will not be administered by BBB.
Discussion
Transit has been BBB’s official trip-planning partner since 2017 and the Transit app is, by far, the app used most often by BBB customers to plan, track, and pay for their trips.
In November 2022, more than 16,000 BBB customers used Transit to plan their trips, opening the Transit app more than 800,000 times. BBB customers can also pay their fares with their smartphones using the Transit app, with more than 15,000 mobile ticketing transactions completed in November 2022, the most of any smartphone app offering BBB fare products other than the regional TAP app.
With thousands of BBB customers using Transit to plan, track, and pay for their trips each month, Transit expects to collect more than 3,300 survey responses each month in Santa Monica from BBB customers and more than 12,200 in Washington, D.C. from 3 of 5
WMATA customers. This type of ongoing data collection from customers is unprecedented.
Because this tool is built upon Transit's existing functionality, which identifies the vehicle, route, origin, and destination of the trip, a question can be asked and answered in mere seconds and provides the agency with detailed data about what their customers are experiencing, when, and where. The result is a better rider experience and a higher response rate, which could significantly reduce survey bias. This quantity and quality of feedback will better allow BBB to focus resources on meeting the revealed operational challenges and directly improve the described customer experience, rather than responding to data and feedback that is sparse and outdated.
BBB, WMATA, and public transit customers in their operating areas would all benefit as the data provided would inform the actions needed to improve the customer experience and increase customer satisfaction and ridership.
Once this survey tool has been developed, tested, and launched, it has the potential to be rolled out nationwide to the thousands of transit customers who use Transit to plan and track their trips, helping agencies large and small across the United States collect meaningful, actionable feedback directly from their riders, and providing them all with the opportunity to make service modifications needed to meet their riders' demands.
Project Budget and Duration
Although BBB will be administering the grant funds, another transit agency, WMATA, is a partner in the project and also a beneficiary of the feature. BBB, WMATA, and Transit will each contribute a local match to the FTA-funded project budget.
The funding breakdown for the contract between BBB and Transit is shown in Table 1.
TABLE 1
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Funding Breakdown Cost
FTA Grant $330,432
Local Match BBB $20,016
Total NTE Contract Value $350,448
The duration of the project is 30 months, including a one-year development and study period and the delivery of a report 18 months post-kickoff, followed by one additional year in which Transit will continue to publish customized survey questions to BBB and WMATA customers within the Transit app and collect and analyze the responses. The project milestone delivery dates are shown in Table 2.
TABLE 2
Milestone Delivery Date
Software Development 12 months post-launch
Project Research 18 months post-launch
Rate My Ride (BBB) 24 months post-launch
Rate My Ride (WMATA) 24 months post-launch
Vendor Selection
Exception to Competitive Bidding
Staff recommends Transit to develop a custom digital survey that will allow its customers to provide quick and easy anonymous feedback to the agency before, during, and at the end of their trip, coupled with real-time travel data from the existing app, as an exception to competitive bidding per Muni Code 2.24.250 (b and F). This purchase meets the City’s exception to competitive bidding criteria (b) Transit is uniquely qualified to deliver this service because of the more than 16,000 BBB customers per month already using the proprietary developed Transit app to plan, track, and pay for their bus trips and (f) special conditions to a grant, donation, or gift that require the use of particular goods and/or services.
b. when a good or service is copyrighted, patented or only available form one license holder, including, proprietary goods, original equipment manufacturers and/or exclusive distributors;
f. special conditions to a grant, donation, gift that require the use of particular goods and/or services;
Environmental Review
The award contract for a digital survey is categorically exempt pursuant to Section 15306 (Class 6) of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) guidelines. Class 6 consists of basic data collection, research, experimental management, and resource 5 of 5
evaluation activities that do not result in a serious or major disturbance to an environmental resource.
Financial Impacts and Budget Actions
Staff recommends the following budget change:
FY 2022-23 Grant Budget Changes
Establish Revenue Budget Appropriate Funds
Account Number(s) Amount Account Number(s) Amount
60600002.420004 $350,448 C6007470.689000 $350,448
Staff seeks authority to approve available funding from the Big Blue Bus Fund to award a contract with 9280-0366 Quebec Inc., dba Transit, to develop a custom digital survey that will allow customers to provide quick and easy anonymous feedback to the agency before, during, and at the end of their trip, coupled with real-time travel data from the existing Transit app. Future year funding is contingent on Council budget approval.
Prepared
By: Barbara Andr
Approved Forwarded to Council
Attachments:
A. 2022-12 OAKS Transit_signed
Contract/Agreement/Purchase Order Request
FY 2022-23 Budget
Request Amount Department/CIP Account # Total Contract Amount $40,000 C6007470.689000 $350,448