City of Omaha saves 1000+ hours each year with FME

The City of Omaha initially leveraged FME to integrate and automate asset management through Cityworks. Their Parking and Mobility Department, which provides residents, commuters and tourists with more convenient travel options was next. Jacob Larson, an Applications Analyst in the Parking and Mobility Division, is championing FME at the City of Omaha. When Jacob heard about another department’s success with FME, he immediately began exploring how he might leverage FME to innovate his own projects. Omaha has now expanded their FME use to support their scooter and bike tracking/ridesharing programs and meter hooding and curb data specification projects. They are also working toward creating a real-time parking availability map for public use. 

Biking and scootering: The most efficient ways to get around town

Alongside their parking and scooter programs, Omaha works with bike-share partners to encourage quick travel primarily in midtown, downtown, and on city trails. Omaha soon plans to collect the number of bikes and type (electric or regular) from each station and will push that information to their parking information website every five minutes.

For scooters, Vehicle ID, location, and duration data are captured every minute and posted to ArcGIS. When scooters are left outside of the approved service areas, Slack and email notifications are sent to the violating party to move the vehicle within the Service Level Agreement or be charged a fee. This entire process is automated through FME. The convenience of personal public transit has increased exponentially, all while maximizing efficiency through automation.

Maximizing efficiency with the Meter Hooding Project

FME is also used for Omaha’s meter hooding project where work zones are tracked to reserve on-street parking for various reasons, such as to accommodate large moving trucks, construction vehicles, repair workers, block parties, and races or parades. Permitting and applications move through Oracle NetSuite into a GIS layer to identify parking meters in a work zone. The status of the meter is confirmed and access to parking is restricted to allow for work to be completed. Previously, the meter hooding request data was entered multiple times into different tables, but with FME, menial data inputting has been reduced, saving staff time and improving data accuracy. 

Easily accessible information with the Curb Data Specification Project

External stakeholders need access to readily available data from the City of Omaha so they can provide accurate information to their customers. City loading, parking, and stopping zone data is pushed to a database for city partners and vendors to access. This is especially useful for mobile app parking providers who can request parking zone ratings and access the most accurate policies and rates in near real-time. A smart loading zone program also allows customers to be billed monthly for designated zones and cameras enforce rules and charges. FME has been instrumental in moving all of this data and making it more accessible. Omaha is pioneering a real-time parking information system, being the first city in the U.S. to have it up and running. 

No more driving around in circles looking for parking

With all this location, parking and meter hooding data being collected by their systems, Omaha plans to create a real-time interactive map to enhance their existing website. The map will display parking and wayfinding with on-street rates, rules and time durations so that when data is coming in, they can broadcast out block-by-block occupancy for users. This will reduce the time people search for street parking. Omaha uses a parking information website so people can view their fines, find garage parking, get monthly rates, see availability, and more.

The City of Omaha is encouraging innovation and fostering team collaboration with FME. Staff are empowered to think outside of the box and experiment with their data. Employees no longer have to sift through endless amounts of data and customers are now helped more quickly, with human error minimized.

With the automation of the meter hooding project, Omaha saves 1000+ hours a year and experiences countless time savings with the automation of the curb data specification project and the scooter and bike tracking ridesharing program. FME touches almost all systems at the City of Omaha and is an integral part of their organization.