Hosted IVR

April 20, 2012

Metrolinx and INIT Partner with new IVR System

By Anil Sharma
TMCnet Contributor

INIT, worldwide leading supplier of intelligent transportation systems and electronic ticketing systems for public transportation, has been selected by GO Transit, a division of Metrolinx, located in Toronto, to deploy a new fleet management system for about 380 GO Busses, 50 GO Rail cars and 70 non-revenue vehicles.

GO is the regional public transit service for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, and carries 61 million passengers a year.

As part of the contract, INIT would provide advanced ITS solution, which includes an intermodal CAD/AVL system, on-board mobile data terminals, automatic passenger counting technology, next stop announcements, in-vehicle variable message signs, real-time vehicle diagnostics and interfaces to existing destination signs, bike rack sensors, and wheelchair lift sensors.

INIT fleet management solution will help to Metrolinx to track revenue and non-revenue vehicles to improve enterprise productivity of current operations and provide enhanced services to GO users.

Officials with INIT said that incorporated into the new contract is the feed of real-time bus information to Metrolinx’s online Customer Information Service (CIS) and their new Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system.

Company officials said that the new system will gather bus and rail real-time locations and predict arrival times for the dissemination of service alerts to travelers and other regional transit agencies. According to company officials, in addition to the ITS for GO’s bus and rail operations, INIT will equip all supervisory vehicles with AVL tracking equipment and outfit supervisors with laptops which will give them remote access to the central CAD/AVL system.

Further provisions call for all GO Bus vehicle garages, including third party-owned satellite garages to be equipped with INIT’s WLAN solution to allow for the wireless transmission of data between the vehicles and the central system.As part of the second phase of the project, vehicle logic units, mobile data terminals, cellular data communications and audio annunciators will be installed on one coach per train.

GO operates commuter trains with service on seven lines that is coordinated with GO bus service during peak hours. The vehicle logic unit will integrate with existing in-vehicle Variable Message Signs, as well as an on-board security camera system that will be installed in the future.

The audio annunciators will be integrated with GO’s existing public address system on all rail coaches to provide automated next rail station announcements in every coach of the train.

The project is set to begin in 2012 and brings the number of INIT customers in Toronto to four.

Edited by Juliana Kenny