In the current economic climate, where states and localities are struggling to maintain basic services despite slashed budgets, transportation and transit agencies are being forced to identify ways to improve efficiency and to continue providing high-quality service with fewer dollars and often with reduced staff. Recognizing that ITS technologies are an important way of maximizing both staff and system effectiveness, the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA) applied for and was awarded an ITS Deployment Program earmark in 2003 that enabled the agency to deploy a series of technologies that would more fully integrate its operations. Upon receiving the award, CARTA immediately moved to consolidate all of its operational data into a data warehouse, a data management system that makes different lines of business more productive by setting up data in a way that allows flexible views into how business units perform. Since it was implemented, the data warehouse has provided the agency with the tools it needs to identify areas where improvements in operational efficiency are possible, enabling CARTA both to increase effectiveness and save money.  

Since the beginning of its data warehouse development efforts in 2004, CARTA has continued to integrate data into the data warehouse and has realized some notable operational efficiencies, including significant reductions in the amount of staff time that had been spent compiling data from separate systems to develop reports. The agency also gained the ability to perform ad hoc quantitative analyses in support of specific decision-making, which has resulted in reduced operating costs.

CARTA OPERATIONS AND THE SMARTBUS PROJECT
CARTA provides transit services for the city of Chattanooga in southeastern Tennessee. Transit services include fixed and flexible route service within the city of Chattanooga and Hamilton County, demand-response paratransit service for citizens with disabilities within the city of Chattanooga and the town of Signal Mountain, a downtown shuttle and parking system, and the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway.

Traditionally, as is common among many transit agencies, key performance data was typically maintained in paper logs, electronic spreadsheets and proprietary software applications. Data was often collected by one application and then had to be manually re-keyed into a second application that had a need for the same data but was not able to “talk to” or integrate with the original collection tool. These manual and semi-automated methods for collecting and maintaining data had several limitations:

• It was a time-consuming process for CARTA personnel.
• The resulting data showed inadequate detail and was prone to errors and inconsistencies due to the manual data entry process.
• The data was often difficult to access and costly to analyze.

Recognizing that improved operational efficiency was a growing necessity, CARTA applied for a federal grant for deployment of a comprehensive transit ITS program through the U.S. DOT’s Research and Innovative Technologies Administration, ITS Joint Programs Office. The “Smartbus Project” funded by this grant involved deployment of a wide array of transit ITS technologies, with the first element of the project being the data warehouse.

THE CARTA DATA WAREHOUSE
The CARTA data warehouse combines data from all CARTA software applications and is the central repository that supports key CARTA operational reporting. The data warehouse is essentially a SQL Server database combined with a data integration software tool that allows users to define scripts that extract data from other CARTA systems into the data warehouse. A screenshot of the interface is shown in Figure 1 below. The system also comprises a reporting tool that allows users to define reports generated from data in the warehouse. This tool also allows CARTA to query data imported into or accessible from the data warehouse and create ad hoc or custom reports. The data warehouse currently includes data on: