How artificial intelligence is being used to improve your bus journey in Coventry

National Express West Midlands (NXWM) is now rolling out the CitySwift AI platform across its entire fleet of over 1,400 buses. The bus company has announced a three-year extension of their AI program following impressive year-on-year results in bus punctuality and efficiency.

Since September 2023, NXWM has used CitySwift’s advanced AI and data technology and said it has resulted in over 20% reduction in delayed services and customer waiting times, while passengers per journey have increased.

The company provides an average of 210 million passenger bus journeys per year in the West Midlands, and CitySwift co-founder and commercial director Alan Farrelly said NXWM was “core to CitySwift’s product development in 2019”.

CitySwift’s latest innovative solution is Spotlight, an intelligent recommendation engine for improving the bus network. The region will be the first in the world to benefit from the technology, aiming for a better balance in resources and logistics operations.

It also improves planner decision-making by providing AI-based insights into performance and resource considerations such as timeliness, cost and number of vehicles. It scans the entire network, providing options for optimizing services and improving efficiency.

National Express network director Ed Rickard described the delivery of the technology as a “groundbreaking achievement”, while National Express director of bus planning Andy Foster said the technology could help alleviate some of the problems caused by increased network congestion roads in the region.

“Using CitySwift’s AI optimization and analytics tools, our skilled planners and network planners have been able to respond effectively, maximizing our productivity and efficiency while reducing delayed runs for customers who rely on our bus services,” said Foster .

Powered by AI data processing, CitySwift optimizes the journeys of over 1 billion passengers annually, working with public sector transport authorities and private bus operators to remove barriers to accessing and interpreting transport data and replacing manual analysis with insights reliable.

The company says the technology improves efficiency, benefiting drivers, passengers, partners and cities while remaining human-centric.