Fleet Leader Interview with Ray Woodall of Wake Coordinated Transportation Services
Located in Raleigh, North Carolina, Wake Coordinated Transportation Services manages the contractors who provide trips throughout Wake County. The agency has been using a complete Paratransit ITS Solution since June 2009. Ray Woodall, Transportation Broker, discusses the benefits ITS has brought to his operation.
1. Have you seen a change in how dispatchers and drivers communicate?
All of the dispatchers are alive! No, actually, there’s been a very significant improvement in terms of the communication between drivers and dispatchers because with mobile computers, dispatchers can send trips directly to the vehicles. This frees up dispatchers to provide drivers with additional information they may need throughout the day. Plus it’s helped clarify addresses, names, destinations and things like that. When dispatchers repeat details over the radio it doesn’t necessarily get translated in the same way as when it’s written down on a driver manifest. With the system, drivers have the written information right in front of them on their screen. That has helped them to improve their ability to deliver services and increase their on-time performance as well.
2. Has the system affected the complaint resolution process?
It has helped some customer complaints drop, particularly with issues of being on time or late for pickups. We have seen a reduction in the number of monthly complaints that we had been receiving. If there is a complaint that is lodged because of a late pickup or drop off, we can go in and use the data from the mobile computer to tell the passenger “this is when the driver arrived” and “this is how long you were on the vehicle.” A lot of times when a complaint comes in saying, “it took me two hours to get home,” when you give them the data from the Ranger it turns out to be thirty minutes. It’s made it a lot easier to resolve those issues because it’s kind of tough to argue with the hard data. Now that customers know we can do that, it’s helped contribute to a reduction in those types of complaints.
3. Have you seen any changes in the office and bus work environments since you started using the system?
The stress level has gone down considerably. Radio traffic has decreased in terms of providing additions or changes to the schedule but we have been able to use the radio to provide other types of information to drivers, such as daily safety messages and more general information about traffic or construction issues. Dispatchers have been able to use the radios to provide that type of information instead of devoting so much radio time to modifications and schedule changes. It’s been a win-win on both sides, with the mobile computers and the use of the radio.
4. Has the data entry process been affected?
The time we spend on data entry has absolutely lessened. When I used to go into the scheduling application I would have to go back at least 7-10 days to pull up verified data. Now I can go in and the services that were done, for example, on Monday, are available for me to review on Tuesday because they’ve already been verified. We’ve been able to have the verification clerk assume other duties because the automatic data entry has simplified the process for her.
5. Has the system affected your fleet’s on-time performance?
We’ve seen a significant increase. We have an on-time performance requirement in our contracts with our vendors. In order to meet the requirements of the contract, they have to be at a performance level, for example, of 92% for the month. We’ve seen that go up on average 2 to 4 points per month. The only time that we see any issues with that is when they first bring new hires on board. The percentage will drop slightly for a couple of weeks, but it starts climbing right back up again. We’ve had some great success as far as on-time performance goes.
6. Where have you seen the most changes in your operation?
The greatest change that we have seen is the improvements in the ways that the drivers, schedulers, and dispatchers are doing the scheduling. With dispatch being able to do on-the-fly changes it’s certainly helped keep the schedules more in-line with using vehicles as efficiently as possible, which in turn improves on-time performance. There’s also been an improvement in the quality of data we’ve been able to get back from the vehicles with the mobile computers.
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