Archive for July, 2010
Monday, July 26th, 2010
Hamilton Street Railway (HSR) transports over 21 million passengers throughout the city of Hamilton, Ontario each year and their 217 vehicles serve over 3,000 bus stops. Recently, HSR implemented ITS technology to streamline operations and comply with an Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) mandate requiring transit agencies to announce every bus stop on every route. Mentor Engineering is proud to have their technology chosen to help keep public transit accessible to all transit riders. Carol Wildeman, Senior Project Management for HSR talked to us about their technology implementation experience.
1. It seems that as a transit agency you really value technology and invest in it. Why is having a good, responsive transportation system so important to your city?
In days gone by, we have been at the forefront of technology, and we were one of the first transit agencies in Canada to have an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. Our previous systems were getting a little elderly so we were at the point where we had to reinvest in our existing system. We found over the years we could reduce a lot of our costs with technology. By adding ITS technology we now have a much bigger focus on the kind of information we can provide to our customers.
2. What features of the ITS system are your dispatchers most excited about?
One of the things they want to do is send our operational notices via text message. Currently, they write them out and post them on the board in the garage, but the problem is that not all of our drivers come into the garage so they never see them. This way, we’ll be able to send our notices out in real-time using text messaging so everyone will be able to read them.
3. What has been the impact of adding a voice annunciator to your transit system?
Certainly, the public likes it. With this technology in place we were able to go to the Ontario Human Rights Commission and say that we have a system, and this is how it works to announce every bus stop. We were able to give a report of how often each driver was on task. We were able to demonstrate to the OHRC that our system is up and it’s working.
4. How much resistance to the system was there from the drivers?
When the system went in the drivers by and large were all for it. They felt that this was being put in to help them, and without it they would be required to announce all the stops themselves. The fact that we made the investment to put in a system that would automatically announce all the bus stops, our drivers really saw this as a benefit to them.
5. What does the future hold for your organization?
I would say that our customers are looking for more information that is easier to access. We’ve been looking at adding wayside signs for our terminals. Customers are going to want real-time information from our IVR system and our website in an easy-to-handle format.
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
Though it’s still in the beta phase, Portland’s TriMet Open Trip Planner represents a large step forward for transit passengers who want to use the internet to plan a trip across the city. The planner lets travelers select a starting or ending date and time and then enter the parameters of their trip, which can include:
- Quickest Trip / Safest Trip / Fewest Transfers
- Maximum Walk (incrementally from a tenth of a mile to 30 miles)
- Wheelchair accessibility (Yes / No)
- Travel by Transit / Bus and Train / Bus Only / Train Only / Walk Only / Bicycle Only / Bicycle and Transit
In addition, the Open Trip Planner also reads information from the U.S. Geological Survey Data Set and can tell travelers the ascent/descent of their planned trip, a feature that will be particularly handy for cyclists.
But perhaps the best feature of all is that Trimet’s new trip planner is completely open source, meaning that agencies from around the world will be able to use it, and keep improving it, for free. And 3rd party developers will be able to use it for developing any type of smartphone app they can think up.
To read BikePortland.org’s article on the announcement of the trip planner, click here.
The TriMet Open Trip Planner test site (still in beta) can be found here.
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
An article on Field Technologies Online.com discusses the many ways fleet tracking can improve the bottom line for fleet operators. The article begins by discussing how fleet tracking makes drivers more accountable for costly behavior, such as unnecessarily idling, speeding, and performing personal errands on company time and with company resources.
From there, author Brian Albright discusses how companies needing a fleet management solution must know in advance what functionalities they wish their installed system to have, instead of simply seeing what is available on the market.
Albright then details how the most successful fleet implementations involve a cross-section of the entire company weighing in on what the system is needed to provide. Billing, accounting, drivers, driver safety, maintenance, management, dispatch and customer service should all be present when examining possible wireless solutions to ensure the solution provides the functionality they need.
Finally, Albright discusses how there are many hidden ROIs within a wireless solution: for example, more efficient vehicle management from computer-aided dispatch could prevent hiring a new worker and purchasing a new truck. Electronic record-keeping also makes the company much stronger to withstand a federal audit should the situation arise.
To read the entire article about how field tracking improves business operations for fleet operators, click here.
Mentor’s demo on the hidden and unnecessary cost produced by wasteful idling can be viewed here.
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
Mountain Mobility has provided paratransit services to the residents of Buncombe County since 1989. Completing more than 500 trips per day with 42 vehicles, Mountain Mobility began using their Paratransit ITS System in January 2010. Lori Hembree, Director at Mountain Mobility, discusses the benefits ITS has brought to her agency.
1. Has the system changed how dispatchers interact with drivers?
Our dispatchers have become more proactive in monitoring driver schedules. They can monitor all the drivers and see whether they are running on-time, early or behind. With this information, they are able to move trips between vehicles without verbal communication or pencil and paper. Also, we can more easily accommodate customers who are early or miss their pick-up. This has helped us improve customer service and keep our on-time performance at an appropriate level.
2. Has the system affected your same-day scheduling procedures?
We didn’t change any of our policies in terms of on-the-fly schedule changes but we are able to accommodate people that are ready early. For example, customers that had a scheduled pick-up but the doctor finished with them two hours ahead of time. We’re much more able to accommodate them and provide a fairly accurate time for when they can expect the van to arrive. It also arrives more quickly than it did before we had the technology. So from that perspective, customer service has improved dramatically.
3. Have you seen changes in the office and bus work environments?
We’ve definitely cut back on radio communication, which has been a great improvement. Even drivers who thought they would dislike it, turned out to really like the technology. They like getting rid of the paper and not having to write everything down. They also like all the information they are able to access by touching the screen, and having turn-by-turn directions when needed.
Since we’re not using paper anymore, there’s been a lot less stress trying to verify trips and our validation process. We also have a lot more information to provide customer agencies that call to ask a question about a no-show. For example, we’ve had situations where an agency has called and said, “this person said they were waiting but the bus never came to pick them up.” We can now go and play back the route. We have the geographic location and the time stamps of all the vehicles so we can assure passengers the van was there and that it waited the required amount of time.
4. Has the system affected your fleet’s on-time performance?
We now have a more accurate reflection of what our on-time performance used to be. With paper records there were a lot of instances of drivers writing down rather suspect times. Now we now have a realistic picture of how much we’re on-time and I’m pretty happy with where it’s at.
5. At this stage in your agency’s growth, what do you think the impact of not having fleet management technology would be?
I think customers would start to notice things going backwards in terms of getting vehicles to them quickly and receiving accurate information over the phone. I think if we were to go backwards at this point we might lose our dispatchers entirely, they’d probably just walk away. Drivers can’t imagine having to go back to paper now. They really like having the computers on-board. So I think from that perspective we would see a revolt!
From the administrative side, I think people’s job stress would fly through the roof if we went back to the verification process we had prior to having the new system and having to try to deal with service issues when it was all a guessing game. I know in my job it would be hard trying to deal with a customer complaint if I couldn’t pull up that van and take a look at it live or play back its route for the day.
