19.1Vehicle Tracking

Don’t worry, sweetie, don’t worry. Nobody in New York notices a bus until it’s about to hit them!Samantha, "Sex and the City", 1998

IT systems can aid in the management of bus operations from a central control center (CCC). Known as automatic vehicle monitoring (AVM) systems, such systems preserve reliability by helping the BRT system maintain planned headways. They also allow the CCC to respond to unexpected levels of demand, disruptions, and emergencies such as bus breakdowns, riots, or traffic jams. The CCC can respond with corrective measures such as vehicle substitution, added vehicles on the line, or driver replacement. The CCC also uses the data produced by the AVM to record all arrival and departure times at stops, time points for calculating the service performance index, and restructure service plans (see Section 19.6 Management Information Systems).

An AVM system consists of a number of key components:

A CCC, from which the operations are managed. CCC computers run AVM software, which facilitates a wide range of service management processes;

A global positioning system (GPS)–equipped device on each bus that records the distance and time logs and maintains the record of driver duty and attendance schedules. This information is transmitted to the CCC in real time;

A communications system between the vehicle and the CCC that can prompt the driver with service information, and facilitates driver communication with the CCC.

The functional requirements of an AVM system depend on the organization modalities and operation procedures adopted by the agency implementing the BRT. Two important planning issues should be considered when organizing the CCC:

Degree of centralization: some transport operators establish a single, centralized control center from which all of the operations are managed. Other transport operators decentralize operations management. In this case, the AVM system allows client access from any workstation connected via the web and makes control and monitoring functionalities available at different locations;

Degree of hierarchy: for either centralized or decentralized systems, AVMs can be configured for a single implementing agency or multiple agencies. In the latter case, appropriate access/read/write rights must be defined in order to guarantee the confidentiality of data. Recorded data transmitted from vehicles and gathered by the CCC are stored in the same database, but one agency can monitor and manage the information only from its own system.