Bus
Rail
Paratransit
Trapeze Group today announced that Western Community Action (WCA), based in southwest Minnesota, has upgraded their demand response management systems by adding Trapeze DriverMate and Samsung Galaxy tablets.
A Trapeze client for many years, WCA equipped their demand response vehicles with tablets in December 2011. WCA is using 13 Samsung Galaxys that are installed with DriverMate, an application that can use handheld devices (tablets or smartphones) to connect vehicles, the dispatch center and the ‘back office’ in real-time.
“DriverMate and off-the-shelf tablets offer WCA a number of benefits: the set up is less expensive than traditional on-board computers, and tablets are easily transferable. Each driver grabs one when they start their workday, log in and immediately see their manifests,” said Shelly Pflaum, WCA’s Transit Coordinator. “Drivers really like ‘their tablets.’ It took them only two or three days to fully understand the basic functions of the new systems,” Pflaum added, “many vehicle operators told me that they would never want to go back to the days of paper manifests and countless radio calls.”
The new installation saves WCA about 1.5 hours of dispatch work each day and cuts down the paperwork significantly. The number of radio calls has been greatly reduced since all changes to manifests are being updated on the tablets in real-time. “Overall we are pleased with the new system,” Pflaum said, “it smoothly integrates with our Trapeze NOVUS demand response management system as well.”
Western Community Action opened its doors in 1965, the same year that Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. Mirroring what was happening at the National and State Levels, WCA became a local testing ground for anti-poverty initiatives and started dreaming its own dream of helping people, changing lives, and eliminating poverty in Lincoln, Lyon, Redwood, Jackson and Cottonwood counties in Minnesota.
While the needs of the many communities WCA serves vary from one location to the next, one focus for every community includes meeting the basic transportation needs. WCA operates 15 buses of which 13 are demand response service vehicles and two operate flexible fixed routes. The agency has over 8,000 registered demand response clients.
About Trapeze Group
Trapeze Group delivers solutions that consider the full 360 degrees of passenger transport. Whether addressing the needs of a single department, an entire organization, or the community, Trapeze provides some of the most advanced software, intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and mobile technologies in the industry. Hundreds of government and commercial organizations across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific have turned to Trapeze to realize efficiencies, enhance the quality and scope of their services, and safely transport more people with less cost. Visit www.trapezegroup.com.
Media Contact
Meaghan Wilkinson
Trapeze Group
(905) 629-5293
