Case Study: Metra achieves scalable, reliable realtime transport updates for 3 million daily users with Ably

Delivering realtime transport updates for 3 million people each day in North Illinois

Metra, the largest commuter rail system outside New York, needed reliable realtime updates to serve roughly 300,000 daily passengers and about 3 million website views per day. Their previous Pub/Sub provider struggled to scale for peaks—Metra’s site supports thousands of concurrent devices and delivers billions of messages monthly—so they turned to Ably for realtime Pub/Sub messaging, connection state recovery, guaranteed delivery/ordering and multiplexed WebSockets.

Ably implemented a scalable, cost-effective realtime platform with 24/7 premium support and delivery guarantees, enabling Metra to consistently publish timetable, train status and station alerts at scale. The result: Ably now handles billions of messages (52 billion delivered to date) while improving service reliability and confidence for commuters, future-proofing Metra’s realtime offering.

Metra

Cherie Kizer

Chief Information Officer