The Challenge

Since its inception in 2015, the Autoridad de Tránsito Municipal de Guayaquil, or ATM, has transformed mobility in Ecuador’s most populated city, Guayaquil. ATM’s mission is to create a more sustainable, inclusive, and intelligent transportation system to improve Guayaquil citizens’ quality of life and help solve the city’s biggest mobility challenges. Because 70% of the population relies on public transportation, especially the most vulnerable sections of society, ATM wanted to significantly improve and optimize the city’s public transportation network.

Until recently, the public transportation system was fragmented, with single individuals buying busses and creating their own routes. ATM took on the massive task of creating a modern and comprehensive public transport system, getting individuals to create official transit agencies that are managed by ATM. They also implemented a fleet monitoring system with GPS installed on each bus to offer real-time information to their riders.

In addition, ATM had recently extended its transportation system to connect the neighboring city of Durán with Guayaquil with Aerovía, a cable car system. With the goal of attracting more people to the city, ATM required a clear understanding of new movement patterns.

Another challenge the transit authority needed to confront was the perception of Guayaquil’s citizens towards public transportation. With the old, fragmented system, there was a feeling among citizens that it only served lower socio-economic levels. In unifying the various routes, the rapid bus transit (BRT) Metrovía system, and new cable car service, ATM also wanted to incorporate technology and innovation in order to create a more flexible service that would be attractive to the whole population.

While the transit authority has conducted costly and lengthy manual surveys as well as using Big Data from Telco companies, that information was never sufficient, as neither is designed to be the basis for decision-making for public transportation. They understood that in order to strategically improve services, they would need better, more high-quality data to do so, both for planning and communicating real-time data to their riders.

The Solution

Guayaquil has been mapped extensively in the Moovit app and Moovit and ATM have had an ongoing partnership since 2018. The City has now detailed information on bus lines, the Metrovía and the Aerovía, as well as historical data well documented by Moovit.

Thanks to this, ATM chose MUMA, Moovit’s Urban Mobility Analytics, a data analysis tool enabling ATM to better understand and plan a more efficient public transport system throughout Guayaquil. After evaluating various solutions, MUMA was the only tool that went beyond simple access to data, providing a detailed understanding of road traffic and public transportation and helping the ATM team create the necessary KPIs that will make Guayaquil a more sustainable and inclusive city.

The chosen analysis reports on Zones, Lines, and Line Performance will enable ATM to make better, data-driven decisions by knowing the exact movement patterns of people in Guayaquil. Understanding how, when, and where people move throughout the city provides them with the data to optimize, reorganize, and create a more efficient public transportation system for citizens and tourists.

The analytics derived from the reports give ATM a deeper understanding of their user’s needs, including reasonable waiting times, where riders are transferring, how citizens are using the network, and the right number of buses and frequency based on demand.

In the midst of the purchase process, the world was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. This required a re-thinking of public transportation to allow social distancing during the two-month quarantine period. With the help of MUMA’s system analysis, ATM was able to adapt services to allow social distancing without affecting the quality of service to citizens.

Moovit also helped ATM Guayaquil create an awareness campaign for the new adaptations and route changes via in-app communication, social media, and even on information boards in well-trafficked areas. The campaign centered around downloading the Moovit app to get the most up-to-date information about the status of public transportation as the situation changed.

Reasons for Choosing Moovit:

• Moovit’s accurate, detailed, and up-to-date origin-destination transit data
• Fast delivery of data reports, even during COVID-19
• Our strong relationship built through prior partnerships

About Autoridad de Tránsito Municipal de Guayaquil

ATM is the Municipal Transit Authority of Guayaquil, an institution that regulates and controls vehicular and pedestrian traffic, in addition to light, commercial, and public transport vehicles operating in Guayaquil, Ecuador.