York Region Transit
Enhanced Vehicle Use for More Responsive Paratransit Service
Challenges
York Region Transit serves the paratransit needs of residents in the nine municipalities of the Regional Municipality of York, Ontario. Providing efficient paratransit service across an extensive service area is a demanding task. YRT wanted a solution that would improve transportation efficiency and improve response times to calls. Bogged down by manual data entry processes, YRT wanted to improve data collection and capture accurate rider information to enhance their reporting system.
Solution
To help YRT achieve these goals, Mentor Engineering partnered with software solutions provider, TranSched Systems. Mentor provided Mentor Ranger® in-vehicle computers with integrated GPS and wireless communications capabilities. Mentor's Paratransit Mobility software, which runs on Ranger, wirelessly delivers work manifests and turn-by-turn navigation to the driver, and facilitates real-time status updates between drivers and dispatchers. To assist in the initial deployment and on-going system management and upgrades, YRT uses Mentor's XMobile Manager ® (XMM) over-the-air programming application, which allows all in-vehicle mobile computers to be managed from a central location.
Results
The implementation at Mobility Plus was completed in the spring of 2008, and since then the organization has realized improvements in incident response times, safety, trip scheduling and vehicle productivity. Even YRT's environmental impact has been lessened with the reduction of the number of "deadhead" kilometers traveled by their vehicles.
"With this system there is the flexibility for dispatchers to add an ad-hoc call to a route since they can see where all the buses are, and passenger safety has improved with the addition of security cameras and vehicle tracking," explains Rajeev Roy, Manager of Transit Management Services at YRT.
Interviews with staff at YRT revealed that the solution provided at least a 35% time savings improvement in scheduling same-day trips. This is largely due to the availability of real-time information, and being able to directly transfer updated schedules to the in-vehicle computers. Says Rajeev: "We did a survey of the staff who all agreed that service has improved. The vehicle tracking is definitely one of the most beneficial features and, from a management perspective, we also like that we can monitor driver's speeds."
|
The system at mobility plus is capable of dynamically rescheduling trips, and the beauty of the mentor system is that trips can be added or modified instantly and updated on the driver's electronic manifest with no effort. Drivers no longer have to manually update their paper manifests. 
Demos
Webinars
Data Sheets
White Papers