Category: Technology
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Transit Incident Management Made Simple with SPOT
Transit operations rarely go exactly as planned. Mechanical failures, farebox issues, vehicle accidents, or even a minor passenger injury can disrupt service and create stress for your entire operations team. That’s why ETA Transit built a dedicated Transit Incident Management module inside our SPOT CAD/AVL platform. This integrated solution gives agencies a smarter way to…
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Tale of Two Surveys: Understanding APC Certification and APTL Survey Part 2
Accurate data collection is critical for transit agencies, especially when reporting to the National Transit Database (NTD). One essential measure is the Average Passenger Trip Length (APTL), which helps agencies calculate the distance passengers travel on average for each unlinked trip. Reporting APTL is a key part of ensuring compliance and maximizing funding from the…
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Navigating the Transit Revolution: Part V—The Future
As technology continues its rapid advancement, the future of GTFS development is marked by a commitment to addressing real-world challenges and embracing emerging innovations. Recent contributions and pull requests to the GTFS repository demonstrate an ongoing effort to refine and enhance the specification.
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Navigating the Transit Revolution: Part IV—A Gateway to Historical Transit Operation Data
Transit ITS Data Exchange Specification (TIDES) is a remarkable GTFS extension that delves into the realm of historical transit operation data. This repository provides data schemas and tools to support the access, management, and improvement of historical transit operations data, including vehicle operations, passenger activity, fare collection, and other similar data. TIDES bridges the gap…
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Navigating the Transit Revolution: Part III—A New Standard in Transit
Transit operators require their scheduling and operational systems to seamlessly work together. This synergy is most effectively attained through the adoption of open standards. Although GTFS has proven highly successful as an open standard, its primary purpose is to disseminate information to transit passengers, which means it lacks vital elements essential for transit providers.
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Navigating the Transit Revolution: Part II—The History of GTFS
GTFS has a rich history that reflects the evolution of public transportation data sharing. It emerged as a response to the challenges posed by fragmented and proprietary data formats, aiming to create a standardized way for transit agencies to share their information with developers and users. To provide necessary context for current and future GTFS…
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The key to transit technology satisfaction—effective communication, reliable hardware
In the realm of mass transit technology, it is a rare occurrence to encounter a potential customer who enthusiastically praises their current CAD/AVL (Computer-Aided Dispatch/Automatic Vehicle Location) vendor. To put it simply, transit operators are often dissatisfied with their CAD/AVL vendor. According to our annual surveys of transit agencies, more than two-thirds express their discontent.…
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The Need for Rugged Transit-Grade Computers in Harsh Transit Environments
Introduction All-in-one tablets are unreliable and unsuitable for public transit applications. Instead, transit agencies must consider investing in transit-grade computers to record and display mission-critical information. Functioning onboard digital devices are essential to: improve operating efficiencies. automate NTD data collection. and enhance the rider experience. Though consumer-grade tablets and all-in-one Mobile Data Terminals (MDTs) with…