70%
Budget allocated to bus operations
Transforming Public Transit Operations at Scale
A public transport provider faced critical reliability challenges with the on-time performance of its buses and fleet breakdowns, impacting a US state’s public transit system. Together, we implemented a comprehensive operational excellence initiative spanning maintenance, operations and dispatch. This multi-year transformation journey included the creation of continuous improvement frameworks that fundamentally changed how 70% of the company’s operating budget is deployed to deliver services.
Industry: Transportation, Logistics and Services
Service: Manufacturing
Service: Operations Strategy and Transformation
Service: People and Organization
Our Client
The company provides public transportation for a large US state and its surrounding areas. Operating within a unique business model due to lower subsidies compared to other major cities, the organization generates revenue independently through a combination of sales tax, grants and electrification incentives. The authority manages both bus and rail operations, with bus services representing the majority of its operational focus. Its fiscally responsible approach earned its CEO recognition from the American Public Transit Association.
3
Bus Maintenance Facilities
+6
Years of collaboration
The Challenge
The company’s operational performance faced systemic constraints threatening service reliability and customer satisfaction across its transit network.
- On-time performance pressures: Bus operations struggled to maintain consistent schedule adherence, with the need to achieve greater than 80% on-time performance while managing daily operational complexities and resource constraints
- Fleet reliability crisis: The mean distance between failures for the bus fleet needed to increase beyond 6,000 miles as frequent breakdowns disrupted service continuity and put a strain on maintenance resources that were already dealing with significant work order backlogs
- Customer experience deterioration: Rising customer complaints needed to be reduced to less than eight per 100,000 passenger trips. This meant tackling broader operational inefficiencies, around technicians efficiency levels and ensuring that planners were operating at more than 50% capacity
Real Results Achieved Together
The transformation established new operational standards across the company’s maintenance and operations divisions. Working alongside leadership and frontline teams, we built sustainable continuous improvement capabilities that delivered measurable impact.
-45%
Reduction in maintenance backlog
25-30%
Labor productivity improvement
$8-10M
Equivalent direct labor cost savings
Transformation Impact
- Established daily pulse processes driving accountability and real-time performance management
- Implemented seven-day ahead scheduling ensuring continuous productive work engagement
- Created Power BI dashboards providing daily efficiency and productivity visibility
Our Approach
Our partnership evolved through multiple targeted initiatives building toward comprehensive transformation. We conducted efficiency studies in maintenance, developing dashboards and teaching management to drive improvements.
Leadership assessments evaluated transformation readiness through nine-box studies, categorizing leaders into stretch, develop and go-along categories based on operational excellence potential. The assessment revealed that 24% of leaders weren’t ready for the operational excellence environment, while others required varying levels of development.
Implementation focused on changing leadership and workforce culture while adopting systems-based approaches to information integration. We established rolling seven-day ahead scheduling processes, to keep technicians consistently assigned and productively engaged. Daily pulse processes challenged performance through accountability meetings where technicians reported progress and explained delays. Sprint improvement workshops empowered employees to identify waste and improve everyday processes. The approach integrated business intelligence systems, providing better information for active, real-time decision-making across bus operations, maintenance and dispatch teams.
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Facing Similar Transit Operations Challenges?
- Struggling with fleet reliability while customer complaints rise and maintenance backlogs grow
- Discovering that your maintenance teams operate below capacity despite claiming resource shortages daily
- Ready to transform operations through proven methodologies that deliver measurable productivity gains
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