The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) estimates that riding public transit instead of driving saves people an average of $9,381 annually, or $782 per month, according to their most recent Transit Savings Report.
Also included in the report is a ranking of the top 20 cities in America with the highest transit ridership in order of their transit savings. According to APTA, the report demonstrates how an individual in a 2-person household can save money and reduce their carbon footprint by using public transportation.
Click here to read more about how public transit can save you money.
Interested in improving your agency’s transit technology but don’t know where to get funding? The Alberta government has recently allotted $2 billion to the Green Transit Initiatives Program (GreenTRIP) to improve transit across the province. If you operate a transit system in Alberta, Canada you are eligible to apply for this money.
As part of North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority’s series on “Transportation and Technology,” a symposium entitled “Social Media in the Transportation Industry: Implications for Change” was held on July 27, 2010. If you would like to hear/view the presentations from this event, they are available through NJTPA’s website here.
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.
With cities and counties facing a large transportation funding shortage, California’s Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) has recently introduced a text messaging program designed to save money on its communications with passengers and cut down on call center activity. The service lets passengers text a bus stop and number to the transportation agency’s call center to find out arrival times of the next three buses at that stop. This program will help OCTA cut its call center budget, which costs the agency more than $160,000 a month.
To read more about the OCTA initiative, click here.
Fixed-route transit ITS solutions were created to help transit agencies deal with the unexpected, including everything from sick employees to traffic jams. A thorough solution should keep your agency running smoothly and efficiently, no matter the reason.
To that end, we’ve created a demo that shows how the various functionalities of an ITS solution can keep an agency on track in one of the most outrageous situations we could imagine: an attack by a group of giant lizards. They’ve invaded the town of Quietville and are making life rather challenging for the local transit agency and its passengers.
While this is obviously a touch on the fanciful side, if a mob of oversized reptiles bent on chaos can’t disrupt the Quietville transit agency, what can? Check out the demo and see who wins.
With the proliferation of transit mapping and mobile applications available, giving your passengers the best trip-planning tools possible can seem like a difficult task. Scott Davis, the founder of ThirstyHead.com, has put together a great overview of the many websites, applications and APIs that can help your customers use transit more effectively. He also provide links to many informative websites and the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), where agencies can easily start the process of opening their transit data to the public. Providing your passengers with these resources will make them more confident when using transit, resulting in increased ridership and improved customer satisfaction. Click here to read the entire article.
It’s simple: keep your riders informed. Here is a good article from Mass Transit on the various technologies available out there to communicate with your riders, from customized web sites, to real-time passenger information and CAD/AVL systems. The benefit of providing accurate transit information to your riders is twofold: if people are confident and comfortable using your system, it will likely increase ridership and reduce traffic congestion. Read more about passenger information technology and its benefits.
A blog for those of us who live and work in fleet management. Topics include engine diagnostics, driver safety, mobile workforce management, CAD/AVL, vehicle maintenance, truck distribution, global computing, work order management, and field services.
Free White Paper: Decreasing Driver Distraction
With driver distraction being a leading cause of vehicle accidents, selecting an in-vehicle computer for your fleet that lets you control when drivers/device interaction is crucial to your fleet’s safety, as well as your bottom line.
