Ferry ridership reporting system

The challenge

San Francisco Bay Ferry records all passenger counts manually as people board. A crew member relays the counts to the captain, who enters them on a laptop on the bridge. The system needs to support that workflow even when cell service drops in the middle of the bay, while giving operations staff and planners the data they need.

Our work

BlinkTag built the end-to-end ridership reporting system, from real-time passenger and bike count entry to onboard passenger views, internal dashboards, data review, automated reporting, and a public-facing ridership dashboard.

The result

Captains and dispatchers can record counts, operations can see how many passengers are actively onboard, and staff can review and finalize data for reporting. The public can explore ridership and bike boardings over custom date ranges and download aggregate data.

Built around work onboard

Passenger and bike counts are entered in real time. The entry workflow is designed to work offline during gaps in cell service on the bay. A separate view shows how many passengers are actively onboard.

We worked closely with San Francisco Bay Ferry staff, operators, dispatchers, captains, and planners to understand their needs. We made iterative changes to the recording interface and trained staff on best practices for recording data.

From daily counts to reviewed reports

The internal dashboard tracks passenger and bike counts across routes, dates, and directions, with raw data exports for further analysis. Automated email reports deliver ridership information, and notifications alert staff when data issues occur.

A data review and finalization pipeline supports the work of checking records and preparing them for reporting.

Public access to ridership data

A public ridership dashboard is available on the San Francisco Bay Ferry website. Visitors can query any date range within the available data, explore systemwide and route-level ridership trends, compare average ridership by route and day of the week, and view bike boarding counts.

View the public ridership dashboard↗

Data people can use

The public table includes passenger boardings, bike boardings, trips operated, and passenger miles by route and date. Visitors can filter by route and day type, sort the results, and export aggregate data to CSV for their own analysis.