Metro Bus
Embracing Technology for Enhanced Efficiency
Challenges
Two-time winner of the American Public Transportation Association's Outstanding Public Transportation System Achievement Award, Metro Bus needed a solution for their fixed-route service that would take their organization to even higher levels of customer service and efficiency. For Metro Bus, managing schedule and route adherence was key. They needed to know the location of their vehicles at all times, and make drivers aware of their on-time performance in order to improve operations.
Solution
For Metro Bus to achieve these goals, they became the beta site for Mentor Streets® Transit in 2004. Streets is a fully integrated ITS solution which includes software applications for Computer-Aided Dispatch/Automatic Vehicle Location (CAD/AVL), event management, and schedule and route adherence. The Streets solution also includes mobile computing and in-vehicle navigation, with Mentor Ranger® installed in all 44 buses. XMobile Manager® (XMM) remotely reprograms and upgrades the Rangers.
Results
The greatest effect Mentor's technology has had on Metro Bus is increased efficiency, resulting in better customer service. Metro Bus has also been able to improve dispatch scheduling, leading to better information management.
Tony Kellen, Director of Operations and Technology at Metro Bus, has noticed improved job satisfaction among dispatchers, and improved clarity around operations. Says Tony: "With Streets, you look at the screen, you select a vehicle, you see who's driving it; you know where they're going and where they've been. It's all about efficiency."
Dispatchers are now equipped with GPS-based vehicle tracking so they can provide customers with instant 'Where's my bus?' answers. With the event management capability they can see system-generated incidents when they happen. In the vehicle, Ranger rugged mobile data terminals, allows drivers to communicate with dispatchers in real-time and view route or schedule changes instantly.
In the four years since Streets was beta-tested at Metro Bus, the transit agency has become a model for blending committed people and intuitive technology to improve efficiency.
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The single biggest impact for our organization is knowing where our vehicles are. It's important to make our drivers aware of their on-time performance so that they run their routes closer to schedule. 
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