April 28, 2026

Take the Friction Out of Reporting With Spare Analytics

Shauna Mercy
Senior Product Marketing Manager
Pat Gregory
Senior Product Manager

If you work in transit operations, you know the pattern.

You prepare for a board meeting by rebuilding the same reports—again.
You pull data for NTD reporting—again.
You get a new question from leadership, and suddenly you’re back in spreadsheets—again.

And when something unusual catches your eye? You flag it, submit a request to the data team, it lands in their queue, and weeks later, an answer trickles back. By then, the moment has passed.

The data exists. The problem is how long it takes to turn that data into something usable.

We've heard this consistently from agencies: "We spend more time preparing reports than actually using them."

That's not how it should work. When insight is instant, when spotting something unusual leads directly to a decision, not a waiting game, the whole dynamic shifts. Your team stops being blocked by process and starts actually driving improvements.

With Spare Analytics, we set out to fix this. Not by layering on another tool, but by rethinking how reporting should work for transit teams from the ground up.

From question to report, without the rebuild

This is the biggest shift we made.

We asked ourselves: what if building a report didn’t require building at all?

With the AI chat assistant, you can describe what you need in plain language:

“Show ridership trends by route over the past six months.”
“Compare on-time performance across service zones last week.”
“Break down cost per trip by service type.”

From there, Spare helps clarify what you’re looking for. Then generates the report for you, structured, visualized, and ready to explore.

You can keep refining it, just by continuing the conversation:

“Filter only on weekdays.”
“Add last year for comparison.”
“Highlight routes below target.”

What used to take multiple steps now happens in a few back and forth's.

More importantly, it changes who can access insights.

You don’t need to be the person who knows how to build reports. Anyone on your team can ask questions and get answers, whether they’re in operations, planning, or leadership.

That shift, from building reports to simply asking for them, is what everything in Spare Analytics is built around.

Built in-house, for transit from day one

To make this possible, we had to rethink how analytics is built in transit.

Most tools sit on top of external BI platforms. That means syncing delays, duplicated logic, and constant maintenance. Every agency ends up rebuilding the same reports, over and over.

We chose not to go that route.

Spare Analytics is built entirely in-house, directly on top of your operational data. No external BI layers. No syncing delays. No separate systems to manage.

That allowed us to focus on what actually matters: making everyday reporting faster and easier to use for the people running service.

Start with answers, not a blank report

But not every report starts as a new question.

A lot of the work in transit is repeatable, and we wanted to make that easier too.

In transit, most reporting needs are predictable:

  • Service performance
  • Ridership trends
  • Driver performance
  • Fleet performance
  • Cost per trip

With the template library, you start with reports already structured around these use cases. The logic is there. The visuals are there. You can adjust what you need—but you’re not rebuilding from scratch.

It removes a lot of repetitive work right away.

Bring everything into one place

Reports shouldn’t live in silos.

Operations teams track one set of metrics. Leadership reviews another. Finance pulls from somewhere else. The same data gets reshaped multiple times depending on the audience.

With flexible dashboards, you can bring those views together.

Combine multiple reports into a single operational view. Set it as a home page. Adjust it depending on who it’s for, whether that’s a daily service check or a board presentation.

Instead of duplicating work, you’re building on the same foundation.

Adjust in real time, with AI

The same AI that helps you create reports also makes it easier to modify them.

Reporting doesn’t stop once a report is built. But too often, that’s where the real work begins.

A new request comes in.
A metric needs to be broken down differently.
The same report needs to be reshaped for a different audience.

And suddenly, you’re rebuilding it, again. That’s the cycle we wanted to eliminate.

With Scout AI built directly into Spare, you can create and modify reports in real time. Just describe what you need, refine the output, and adjust as you go, without starting over.

No exporting data. No rebuilding from scratch. Just faster ways to get the report you need, ready to share.

See how it works with your service

We set out to remove the friction that slows teams down every day.

Less time rebuilding reports.
Less time jumping between tools.
Less time responding to one-off requests.

And more time actually using your data to make decisions.

It should feel like a weight off your team, not another system to manage.

It starts with a simple idea: you shouldn’t have to build reports to get answers.

Every agency operates differently. The way you report, the metrics you track, and the questions you get will vary.

If you’re curious how the new Spare Analytics fits into your workflows, we’d be happy to walk through it with you. We’ll focus on the reports you already run today, and show how you can get to those answers faster, with less effort.

Shauna Mercy
Senior Product Marketing Manager
Product marketer focused on making transit more equitable by helping agencies adopt solutions that improve accessibility and overall rider experience.
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Shauna Mercy
Pat Gregory
Senior Product Manager
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Pat Gregory

“Once we unified dedicated vehicles and TNCs on a single platform, the experience changed immediately for riders. They could see their trip in real time, understand their fare, and know what to expect. From a staff perspective, it eliminated confusion and allowed us to focus on service instead of troubleshooting.”

Owen Albrecht
,
Paratransit Manager, City of Alexandria