How MVTA rolls out guest WiFi to keep commuters riding happy

The Minnesota Valley Transit Authority (MVTA) is a public transportation company that delivers demand-responsive and fixed-route bus services for seven suburbs roughly 15 miles south of Minneapolis and St. Paul: Burnsville, Apple Valley, Rosemount, and Eagan in Dakota County, and Savage, Shakopee, and Prior Lake in Scott County. MVTA is an independent transit agency, part of a network of four agencies created in the late 1980s under state legislation that let outer-ring suburbs withdraw from centrally provided transit services.

MVTA’s service mainly transports passengers from suburban housing areas to bustling parts of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Although ridership concentrates during rush hour, MVTA operates seven days a week and up to 18 hours a day on some routes.

To attract more riders, the MVTA team brainstormed a few ideas to make the bus experience more enjoyable and convenient. They wanted riders to make better use of the 30–40 minutes each way than they would sitting behind the wheel — and felt that offering free WiFi on board could draw riders back and entice new ones to give MVTA a try.

Customer satisfaction was top of mind. MVTA knew that if it offered WiFi, it had to be reliable and easy to join — a burdensome process could backfire against a stringent budget, or deter riders from trying the bus again.

Because WiFi was needed in both stations and individual buses, MVTA looked for the right fit for each environment. For the stations, it chose Cisco indoor access points, gaining clear network-wide visibility and control through Cisco’s cloud management. For the buses, it chose Cradlepoint — purpose-built for mobile and transportation networks, cost-efficient, secure, and remotely cloud-managed.

With hardware chosen — Cisco for station offices, Cradlepoint for buses — MVTA needed a guest WiFi layer that would work seamlessly across both, stay cloud-managed, be easy to use, and ensure passenger satisfaction. That’s when it found Cloud4Wi.

What attracted MVTA was how intuitive Cloud4Wi was. With four stations and over 160 buses, rolling out Cloud4Wi was far less of a hassle than the alternatives. A big deciding factor was customizability: MVTA could pick login options, set internet policies, and brand the captive portal. Analytics mattered too — as passengers connected, MVTA wanted to see demographics (age, language, device type) and understand how, when, where, and why WiFi was used.

“When we first started using Cloud4Wi, we were blown away by all the different customizations available — a variety of login options, internet plans, welcome-portal templates and more. It’s so rich in features, with analytics and marketing applications available, and the best part is all these capabilities are in one place. This makes our job significantly easier.”
— Tyre Fant, IT Administrator, MVTA

In June 2015, Cloud4Wi was deployed across MVTA’s stations and buses. Passengers were noticeably happier — saving time and energy each day versus driving and sitting in traffic — and could get a jump-start on work or study while riding.

Across the buses, MVTA kept one consistent splash-page look. It offered a few login options — email and social sign-in — so passengers could choose how to connect and what to share. The captive portal also featured a weather app for the next few days and MVTA’s Twitter feed, so riders could follow transit news, delays, and local events.

MVTA used the data to understand its riders: a fairly even age distribution, with the majority between 21 and 35, and an overwhelming 76% browsing from mobile phones. With WiFi Service Analytics, MVTA could see session lengths and the most popular connection days and times — weekdays, Monday–Friday, around 8am and 5pm.

Seeing how comprehensive Cloud4Wi is, MVTA is exploring how to use it further. Next, it would like to extend the solution to the rest of its buses.

MVTA is also interested in Cloud4Wi’s marketing tools — especially surveys, which can be created and prompted during onboarding, shown on the captive portal, or promoted after a rider gets off the bus. Surveys are a simple way to gather feedback: praising highly rated drivers, improving specific fleets, or justifying demand for more destinations, new routes, or more frequent service. MVTA also plans to offer coupons and discounts to frequent riders through email marketing — helping boost ridership.