The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) runs a 1,200-acre coastal campus in La Jolla with steep grades and a spread-out layout. For a student population of over 45,000, reliable transit isn't optional. Students need to get between residential colleges, academic buildings, and the newly connected Blue Line Trolley stations.

Triton Transit operates a fixed-route circulator network, with up to 10 vehicles on the road during peak hours. At the same time, Triton Mobility handles ADA paratransit services for students with disabilities. The two services used to run on completely different systems where Triton Transit relied on a legacy platform, while Triton Mobility already ran on Spare. That split created operational problems.

"Our fixed-route and paratransit operations lived in completely different worlds. We had different vendors, different data sets and no shared visibility between them. We'd lost trust in our GTFS feed and were maintaining it by hand just to keep our wayfinding and mapping accurate. What we needed wasn't another point solution. We needed one platform that could run the whole operation." — Jose Perez, Director of Transit, UC San Diego

What wasn't working

• Tracking data nobody trusted. TransLoc's real-time tracking became unreliable enough that UCSD stopped trusting its automated GTFS feed and started updating the data by hand instead. The GTFS exports were locked behind proprietary access. UCSD couldn't see route names or make changes in the data.
• A workforce that's hard to schedule. Triton Transit runs two kinds of drivers, career and student, on schedules that change quarterly and sometimes every three weeks. Splitting fixed-route and paratransit across separate systems meant dispatchers couldn't see driver availability or vehicle status across both modes at once. Coordinating relief vehicles and covering runs took manual work the tools weren't built to support.
• Uneven accessibility. The campus is physically demanding to navigate even without a mobility impairment. Because the two systems didn't talk to each other, students with disabilities got a different level of service depending on which mode they used.

Consolidating on Spare’s unified platform

Running two disconnected systems wasn't sustainable, so UCSD moved its entire transit operation onto Spare, bringing Triton Transit and Triton Mobility onto one platform with one shared set of data.

The first step was replacing the legacy infrastructure with Spare Fixed Route, giving the university a real-time system in place of the old one.

Centralizing on Spare also gave UCSD back control of its GTFS feed. The Transitland feed registry now lists Spare as the publisher of Triton Transit's static and real-time feeds, with vehicle positions served via GTFS-RT. What used to be a manual, error-prone process is now automated, which means accurate data flows to campus wayfinding signs, and the feeds are Google and Apple Maps ready.

Schedule changes used to take weeks to implement, but with Spare dispatchers can now make ad hoc detours and real-time run cuts on the spot. That matters on a campus where demand shifts every quarter and construction regularly changes routes. Dispatchers can also see vehicle and driver availability across every mode in real time.

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Unified reporting and accountability

Before Spare, university leadership had no way to see transit performance across the whole network. Fixed-route and paratransit data sat in separate systems with nothing connecting them.

Spare's dashboards now pull data from both fixed-route and paratransit into one place, so reporting happens in real time without anyone manually reconciling numbers across tools. One platform means one team is responsible for data integrity and system performance.

What's next

With operations and reporting unified, UCSD is turning its attention to network efficiency. The university is using Spare's data to build heatmaps that show where routes can be right-sized.  Finding savings and streamlining operations without losing sight of the fact that students' schedules, built around academics, still have to come first. Because Triton Transit and Triton Mobility share a driver pool, a single source of data also means UCSD can staff both services appropriately instead of managing coverage across two disconnected systems.

A resilient network, built to last

These operational changes show up directly in the rider experience. Students can track their shuttles and trust that the data behind their apps is accurate and current. 

"We're moving tens of thousands of students across a campus where walking isn't always an option, and our riders don't think in terms of fixed route or paratransit.  They just need to get where they're going. Now that our systems are unified, we can give every student that same reliable, real-time experience, whether they're catching the Mesa Loop or riding Triton Mobility." — Jose Perez, Director of Transit, UC San Diego

By bringing its entire transit operation onto one platform, UCSD built a network that can grow with the university. It also holds up to the federal compliance standards that come with running paratransit and fixed route side by side.