There's more to learn.
Subscribe to our blog mailing list so you can continue reading.
Type your search

Making Transit Music When Your Systems Are in Operational Harmony 

Sep 27, 2019
Reading Time:
Bus
Workforce Management

Don’t you love it when everything comes together perfectly? Isn’t it just music to your ears?   

Think of a passenger on the morning commute to work. She sits comfortably, quietly grooving to the lush sounds coming from her earphones. Just 30 minutes earlier, after checking her ride on her phone, she had strolled to her stop, with five minutes to spare. Her bus had arrived on time, like clockwork. Now, she’s snuggled in her seat, rapt in music, ready for the day.   

She can’t hear it, but behind the music she’s enjoying, lies another enthralling composition. It’s the operational harmony of the many systems that run the bus, coming together like a grand symphony of uplifting music that hits you in the feels. It’s the beautiful, soaring sound of all systems working together at full pitch. To the passenger, it’s the “sound” of seamlessness that keeps her day in balance.   

This unified system architecture - the integration of your operational systems, each one harmonizing perfectly with one another - is a powerful tool. You obtain complete insight that helps you proactively manage daily operations. When your systems sing together, you coordinate a better customer experience. You circulate useful information faster, breaking down the silos that can decrease performance and increase costs.  

Harmonizing Your Workforce  

What happens when your operations and dispatching systems blend perfectly together? Here’s where your people – the heart of every transit agency – are in operational harmony, in sync and up to speed to enhance the passenger journey for each customer.   

For bus, integrating workforce management and dispatching systems enables the vital flow of real-time information for transit workers to respond quickly to unfolding events on the road. Integration creates a single source of truth, an authoritative database collecting all information in one place. This data is automatically shared throughout the system, eliminating duplicate entry that frees up your employees to address other issues.   

Managing your workforce is an incredibly complicated affair, one you will be looking to streamline wherever you can. The benefits of having two vital operational functions singing in perfect harmony cannot be overestimated when dealing with complex employee information.   

When your Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) and your Workforce Management software are of one voice, the many personnel details you need to track and monitor flow freely from one system to the other. Employee information is entered only once, saving you considerable time and effort.   

Think how daily operations improve when there is only one source of record for all employee-related data. It’s like singing from the same song sheet in a choir - no stray notes or flubbed lines, just pure harmony.  

Imagine adding new employees to your operations management software, and automatically importing them into your CAD/AVL systems, removing the burden of adding employees in both applications. This means that daily operator assignments need not be entered separately in the two systems. Operators are validated once they log in on their vehicles and are good to go, keeping your schedule on time.  

Or how about when operator and vehicle data, such as sign-in/sign-off and pull-in/pull-out, are viewed and updated in both systems at once?   

This makes it easier for dispatchers to send in an available driver or vehicle for on-street reliefs. When the two systems know each other well, operations can quickly choose from drivers who have not yet logged in or vehicles that haven’t pulled out of the yard.  (Our lady on the bus, may have to change rides, alas, but she certainly won’t be waiting long!)   

Canceling work also becomes a matter of minutes when two systems are in harmony. When you integrate your ITS and operations systems, you can instantly communicate canceled work from one entity to another, and vice versa, saving time and money.  

Picture this:  When you cancel a trip in operations, the ITS system gets notified, and in turn, cancels the trip. And if you restore a trip in operations, ITS is alerted and restores the trip as well. Trips canceled and restored in ITS are processed accordingly in the operations system. Everything is in perfect rhythm, not a beat missed, and passengers get their rides on time.  

Making Beautiful Music Together: When Systems Sing with One Voice  

When your systems are in sync, real-time communication between them creates a more accurate view of your operations. You respond immediately to developments and reduce miscommunication that can cause incidents or passenger complaints.    

On the other hand, when your systems operate in silos, you lose that flexibility or window of opportunity to up your game or preempt mistakes.   

What happens, for instance, when Operations cancels a trip and then restores it later, but the ITS system hasn’t been updated yet? No bus and messed-up passenger schedules. Think of our lady bristling by the bus stop, wondering what happened to her ride. Communication delays can be costly, diminishing the passenger experience.    

But where there is harmony, innovation thrives. Integrating systems creates many possibilities for streamlining work procedures to find even faster ways of managing your workforce.  A huge benefit of native Trapeze to Trapeze integration is how operations managers can audit employee activities, such as claims for extra pay, right from their employee management and pay screens.  

Say an operator has driven longer than his scheduled time due to heavy traffic or adverse weather. The driver generates an Extra Pay Inquiry in Operations Management (OPS) to indicate his pay needs to be adjusted. Operations then pulls his vehicle log-in/log-off, pull-in and pull-out times by clicking on a “TransitMaster Events” button to approve or deny the inquiry.   

Schedulers also easily offer extra work, such as special or casual work, to drivers on assignment. OPS can send an “Offer Work” message to the onboard ITS system, TransitMaster, and the operator simply responds with a Yes or No, speeding up scheduling.   

When your systems blend into one awe-inspiring voice, in perfect harmony, your employees think as one too. Integration between ITS and Operations empowers transit workers to get the information they need to improve service delivery, eliminate time-consuming redundancies, and take collaboration to the next level. That’s making beautiful transit music that has our lady on the bus grooving in perfect contentment.    


 
Simon Minelli is the Industry Solutions Manager, SPA and OPS, at Trapeze Group North America. Simon has a keen interest for all things transit planning and operations. He has extensive experience understanding transit business rules and best practices and excels at developing technology solutions to meet those business needs. Simon loves to explore transit systems around the world and understand how they can contribute to thriving cities.
 
Test
{if:elseif}
Test
The latest in transit, delivered straight to your inbox.
Thanks
You are now subscribed to the Trapeze blog
Connect With Us View Solutions
Request a Live Demo
 
Let's get you on the mailing list
 
Select Your Region