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What IDS can do for Your Agency: Priorities + Focus = Performance

Jun 10, 2016
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Intelligent Transportation Systems

The constant, colossal stream of data that transit agencies produce can be overwhelming. Details may be missed and priorities may get lost, leading to operational inefficiencies and unsatisfied riders. To avoid going data blind, it’s important to focus on the things that really matter to your enterprise.

Intelligent Decision Support (IDS) identifies and automatically prioritizes issues and gives agency staff real-time, easy to understand data visualizations, and automated alerts to help them make timely decisions and maintain a higher level of overall transit system performance.

The core value proposition of IDS is that it helps keep attention focused where and when it’s most critical. It answers most urgent questions such as “What event has priority?”, “What service needs attention?” and “What shall I do next?” The system continuously monitors and analyzes data from various sources—such as IDS generated data, map data, traffic information, scheduling and/or weather alerts. IDS automates how information is displayed and allows the user to tailor their experience with custom consoles and visualizations.

All of this helps dispatchers and other users take the best action in response to a given scenario. Once they’re focused on the most critical issues, IDS helps staff in make data-driven decisions by:

  • Advising dispatchers how to proceed in emergency and recovery situations based on predefined agency rules
  • Optimizing dispatchers’ decisions and the reliability of transit service information
  • Monitoring and analyzing vehicle and external data in real-time

The technology is great. But it is impossible to disintermediate smart, well-trained people from decision making. So, it’s important to take advantage of IDS training and consulting services to help agency staff become problem-solvers. The investment is well worth it to improve service quality and safety of their operations.

One practical example of the sort you’ll hear on our webinar comes from PACE, the suburban bus division of the Regional Transportation Authority in the Chicago metropolitan area. PACE was having a consistent issue with Demand Response drivers not cycling their wheelchairs prior to leaving the garage in the morning. No amount of signage or reminders seemed to help the situation. Their overall compliance for this action was in the range of just 20% fleetwide.

To combat this, a PACE system admin modified the IDS Wheelchair Not Cycled rule to automatically email a driver’s supervisor every time they failed to cycle their wheelchair. Within just one week, driver’s compliance to cycle wheelchairs increased to over 80% with continuing improvement over the following weeks.

These kinds of stories - a simple tweak that extracts exceptional value - are pretty common among Trapeze Group’s IDS customers. The recurring theme is that keeping staff focused on what’s important at any given moment produces more efficient operations and happier customers.

If you want to learn more about how IDS could benefit your agency, listen to the recording of my webinar with Gurch Lotey, Special Projects Engineer - Edmonton Transit System (ETS) “Making the Most Out of your Intelligent Decision Support," where we discussed the benefits of IDS and how ETS uses IDS to fulfill their unique challenges.


 
Nick Ross has over 10 years of experience in the public transportation industry and has worked with over 40 large scale transit agencies successfully delivering multi-million dollar advanced transportation systems across North America. As the Industry Solutions Manager for Intelligent Transportation Systems, Nick strives to share his transit knowledge, expertise, and experience throughout the North American Transportation industry.
 
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