Personal Mass Transit | Green Energy News

August 25, 2002 – Vol.7 No.22

PERSONAL MASS TRANSIT.

As efficient as they are at moving people from place to place, buses aren’t exactly the most popular mode of transit in the U.S. Maybe it’s the noise, the unwillingness to spend time with strangers, or the long wait in the rain for the bus that always seems late, who knows?

But what if you could open a webpage on your laptop, or a screen on your Internet accessible personal digital assistant (PDA), that told you exactly - in real time - when the bus you wanted would be at the nearest stop? Though you’d still have to ride with all those strange, unfamiliar people, there would be no waiting. All you had to do was walk to the bus stop, get aboard, pay the fare and ride. The bus would become a form of personal transportation. Would that encourage you to get out of your car and ride the bus?

By the time you read this TriMet, the transit agency of Portland, Oregon will have opened a new website that will provide real time, minute-by-minute countdowns of bus arrival times at about 8000 stops. By the end of the year the same information will be available by wireless communication devices. And for those with neither access to computer, a wireless PDA or other device, TriMet is also installing Transit Tracker displays at a number of high-ridership and transfer stops - more than 60 planned by the spring of 2003. The displays will also offer real time information on incoming buses to waiting riders

Part of the technology that would make it all work is telematics. Telematics, when used in fleet vehicles like buses, collects and transmits vehicle information such as speed, distance traveled, and position via on-board hardware and sophisticated software. When dissected, some of that information can be passed on to waiting riders.

Telematics software company Solid Information Technology, claims (through analysis by others) that the total telematics industry including equipment and services could reach $19.6 billion by 2006, and fleet management services segment of the market alone could reach $6 billion by 2007.

Visit TriMet at http://www.trimet.org/ , Solid at http://www.solidtech.com/ , the Intelligent Transportation Society of America at http://www.itsa.org/ for additional transit information.