How Transport for NSW is tapping machine learning

At the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Australian transport agency Transport for New South Wales (NSW) had to restore public confidence in the state's transportation network and curb the spread of the disease. One of the ways it did that was to analyse the travel history recorded by Opal transit cards – with an individual's permission – and inform the commuter if the regular buses and train services that they had been taking were Covid-safe. Chris Bennetts, executive director for digital product delivery at Transport for NSW, said those insights were derived using a machine learning model that predicts how full a bus or train carriage was going to be at a given time. Based on the predictions, commuters would be advised if they could continue using their regular services or switch to a different service or mode of transport. "That was interesting for us because it was our first foray into personalisation to offer more choices for customers," said Bennetts.