MTA – Ground Response

This is a SaaS (Software as a Service) supply which, using the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure, will provide MTA with information about station crowding levels, based on the detection of people moving through the network.

The first part of the service is to work with MTA’s Wi-Fi provider to “count” the number of Wi-Fi enabled phones being detected by Wi-Fi routers, wherever they are installed. Note that this does not require the person travelling to have registered to use the service – merely to have a phone which is Wi-Fi enabled.

Stations will be categorized by capacity by agreeing a usable platform length for each and a set safe distance between passengers. For each station 100%, 50% and 20% capacities can be calculated, to give “crowded”, “busy”, and “quiet” thresholds. The data gathered from the WIFI count can then be applied to the thresholds per station and used to alert MTA to current levels of crowding.