NiTTS Demand Response Dispatch - Transit Management Functionality
Subsystem Description
The Transit Management Subsystem manages transit vehicle fleets and coordinates with other modes and transportation services. It provides operations, maintenance, customer information, planning and management functions for the transit property. It spans distinct central dispatch and garage management systems and supports the spectrum of fixed route, flexible route, paratransit services, transit rail, and bus rapid transit (BRT) service. The subsystem's interfaces allow for communication between transit departments and with other operating entities such as emergency response services and traffic management systems. This subsystem receives special event and real-time incident data from the traffic management subsystem. It provides current transit operations data to other center subsystems. It interfaces with the Emergency Management Subsystem to allow coordinated use of transit vehicles to facilitate response to major emergencies or evacuations. The Transit Management Subsystem collects and stores accurate ridership levels and implements fare structures for use in electronic fare collection. It collects operational and maintenance data from transit vehicles, manages vehicle service histories, and assigns vehicle operators and maintenance personnel to vehicles and routes. The Transit Management Subsystem also provides the capability for automated planning and scheduling of public transit operations. The scheduling capability includes schedule writing, block building and runcutting. The subsystem furnishes travelers with real-time travel information, continuously updated schedules, schedule adherence information, transfer options, and transit routes and fares. In addition, the subsystem supports transit security features. This includes monitoring silent alarms, both passenger and operator initiated, on-board transit vehicles. It also includes the capability to support transit vehicle operator authentication and the capability to remotely disable a transit vehicle. The subsystem includes the capability to monitor for a transit vehicle being off the assigned route. The subsystem also includes the capability to alert operators and police to potential incidents identified by these security features.
Functional Area: Transit Center Information Services
Provide interactive traveler information to travelers (on-board transit vehicles, at stops/stations, using personal devices), traveler information service providers, media, and other transit organizations. Includes routes, schedules, transfer options, fares, real-time schedule adherence, current incidents, weather conditions, yellow pages, and special events.
| ID | Requirement | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The center shall provide travelers using public transportation with traffic and advisory information upon request. Such information may include transit routes, schedules, transfer options, fares, real-time schedule adherence, current incidents, weather conditions, and special events. | Planned |
| 2 | The center shall provide transit information to the media including details of deviations from schedule of regular transit services. | Planned |
| 3 | The center shall exchange transit schedules, real-time arrival information, fare schedules, and general transit service information with other transit organizations to support transit traveler information systems. | Planned |
| 4 | The center shall provide transit service information to traveler information service providers including routes, schedules, schedule adherence, and fare information as well as transit service information during evacuation. | Planned |
| 5 | The center shall enable yellow pages (including non-motorized transportation) information to be output to the traveler. | Planned |
| 6 | The center shall broadcast transit advisory data, including alerts and advisories pertaining to major emergencies, or man made disasters. | Planned |
Functional Area: Transit Center Multi-Modal Coordination
Coordinate schedules with other agencies and modes, including transit transfer cluster and transfer point information.
| ID | Requirement | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The center shall coordinate schedules and services between transit agencies, traffic management, maintenance and construction operations, parking management, and other surface or air transportation modes. | Planned |
| 2 | The center shall share transfer cluster and transfer point information with multimodal transportation service providers, other transit agencies, and traveler information service providers. A transfer cluster is a collection of stop points, stations, or terminals where transfers can be made conveniently. | Planned |
| 3 | The center shall accept requests from traffic management to change routes and schedules as part of the implementation of demand management strategies. | Planned |
| 4 | The center shall coordinate transit services for special events, planning services for the event and managing transit services on the day of the event. | Planned |
| 5 | The center shall provide transit operations personnel with the capability to control and monitor transit service coordination activities. | Planned |
Functional Area: Transit Center Paratransit Operations
Management of demand response transit services, including paratransit. Planning and scheduling of these services. Supports automated vehicle dispatch and automatically updates customer service operator systems.
| ID | Requirement | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The center shall process trip requests for demand responsive transit services, i.e. paratransit. Sources of the requests may include traveler information service providers. | Planned |
| 2 | The center shall monitor the operational status of the demand response vehicles including status of passenger pick-up and drop-off. | Planned |
| 3 | The center shall generate demand response transit (including paratransit) routes and schedules based on such factors as parameters input by the system operator, what other demand responsive transit schedules have been planned, the availability and location of vehicles, the relevance of any fixed transit routes and schedules, road network information, and incident information. | Planned |
| 4 | The center shall dispatch demand response (paratransit) transit vehicles. | Planned |
| 5 | The center shall exchange information with Maintenance and Construction Operations concerning work zones, roadway conditions, asset restrictions, work plans, etc. | Planned |
| 6 | The center shall disseminate up-to-date schedules and route information to other centers for demand responsive transit services (paratransit). | Planned |
| 7 | The center shall collect the log of passenger boardings and alightings from the paratransit vehicles. | Planned |
Functional Area: Transit Center Security
Monitor transit vehicle operator or traveler activated alarms; authenticate transit vehicle operators; remotely disable a transit vehicle; alert operators, travelers, and police to potential incidents identified by these security features.
| ID | Requirement | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The center shall monitor transit vehicle operational data to determine if the transit vehicle is off-route and assess whether a security incident is occurring. | Planned |
| 2 | The center shall receive reports of emergencies on-board transit vehicles entered directly be the transit vehicle operator or from a traveler through interfaces such as panic buttons or alarm switches. | Planned |
| 3 | The center shall support the back-office portion of functionality to authenticate transit vehicle operators. | Planned |
| 4 | The center shall exchange transit incident information along with other service data with other transit agencies. | Planned |
| 5 | The center shall receive information pertaining to a wide-area alert such as weather alerts, disaster situations, or child abductions. This information may come from Emergency Management or from other Alerting and Advisory Systems. | Planned |
| 6 | The center shall send wide-area alert information to travelers (on-board transit vehicles or at stations/stops) and transit vehicle operators. | Planned |
| 7 | The center shall coordinate the response to security incidents involving transit with other agencies including Emergency Management, other transit agencies, media, traffic management, and traveler information service providers. | Planned |
| 8 | The center shall receive threat information and status on the integrity of the transit infrastructure. | Planned |
| 9 | The center shall provide support to remotely disable (or reset the disabling of) a transit vehicle in service. | Planned |
Functional Area: Transit Center Vehicle Tracking
Monitoring transit vehicle locations via interactions with on-board systems. Furnish users with real-time transit schedule information and maintain interface with digital map providers.
| ID | Requirement | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The center shall monitor the locations of all transit vehicles within its network. | Planned |
| 2 | The center shall determine adherence of transit vehicles to their assigned schedule. | Planned |
| 3 | The center shall support an interface with a map update provider, or other appropriate data sources, through which updates of digitized map data can be obtained and used as a background for transit tracking and dispatch. | Planned |
| 4 | The center shall provide transit operational data to traveler information service providers. | Planned |
| 5 | The center shall provide collected transit probe data to traffic management centers and traveler information service providers for use in measuring current traffic conditions. | Planned |
Functional Area: Transit Environmental Monitoring
Current and forecast road and weather information assimilated from weather service providers and vehicle probes. The information is monitored and forwarded to other agencies to more effectively manage transit operations.
| ID | Requirement | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The center shall assimilate current and forecast road conditions and surface weather information to more effectively manage transit operations. | Planned |
| 2 | The center shall collect current and forecast road and weather information from weather service providers and roadway maintenance centers. | Planned |
Functional Area: Transit Garage Maintenance
Collect operational and maintenance data from transit vehicles, manage vehicle service histories, automatically generate preventative maintenance schedules, and provide information to service personnel.
| ID | Requirement | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The center shall collect operational and maintenance data from transit vehicles. | Planned |
| 2 | The center shall monitor the condition of a transit vehicle to analyze brake, drive train, sensors, fuel, steering, tire, processor, communications equipment, and transit vehicle mileage to identify mileage based maintenance, out-of-specification or imminent failure conditions. | Planned |
| 3 | The center shall generate transit vehicle maintenance schedules that identify the maintenance or repair to be performed and when the work is to be done. | Planned |
| 4 | The center shall generate transit vehicle availability listings, current and forecast, to support transit vehicle assignment planning based, in part, on the transit vehicle maintenance schedule. | Planned |
| 5 | The center shall assign technicians to a transit vehicle maintenance schedule, based upon such factors as personnel eligibility, work assignments, preferences and seniority. | Planned |
| 6 | The center shall verify that the transit vehicle maintenance activities were performed correctly, using the transit vehicle's status, the maintenance personnel's work assignment, and the transit maintenance schedules. | Planned |
| 7 | The center shall generate a time-stamped maintenance log of all maintenance activities performed on a transit vehicle. | Planned |
| 8 | The center shall provide transit operations personnel with the capability to update transit vehicle maintenance information and receive reports on all transit vehicle operations data. | Planned |
Functional Area: Transit Vehicle Assignment
Assigns individual transit vehicles to vehicle blocks and downloads this information to the transit vehicle, updating assignments as necessitated by changes. It also provides an inventory management function that stores attributes about each of the transit vehicles.
| ID | Requirement | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The center shall assign individual transit vehicles to transit blocks. | Planned |
| 2 | The center shall download vehicle assignments to the transit vehicle prior to the start of the day’s operations. | Planned |
| 3 | The center shall provide an exception handling process for the vehicle assignment function. This process shall generate new supplemental vehicle assignments as required due to change events which occur during the operating day. | Planned |
| 4 | The center shall provide an inventory management function for the transit facility that stores functional attributes about each vehicle owned by the transit operator. The functional attributes permit the planning and assignment functions to match vehicles with routes based on suitability for the types of service required by the particular routes. | Planned |
| 5 | The center shall generate transit vehicle availability listings, current and forecast, to support transit vehicle assignment planning. | Planned |
| 6 | The center shall provide transit operations personnel with the capability to update transit vehicle assignments and receive reports on transit vehicle inventory status. | Planned |
Functional Area: Transit Vehicle Operator Assignment
Assignment of transit operators to runs in a fair manner while minimizing labor and overtime services, considering operator preferences, qualifications, accumulated work hours, and other information about each operator.
| ID | Requirement | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The center shall maintain records of a transit vehicle operator's performance. This may be done utilizing standardized performance evaluation criteria set forth by governmental regulations and transit operating company policies, assessing the transit vehicle operator's driving history, and assessing comments from the transit vehicle operator's supervisor(s) as well as noting any moving violations or accidents, supervisor comments, government regulations, and company policies. | Planned |
| 2 | The center shall assess the transit vehicle operator's availability based on previous work assignments, accumulated hours, plus health and vacation commitments. | Planned |
| 3 | The center shall assign transit vehicle operators to transit schedules based on their eligibility, route preferences, seniority, and transit vehicle availability. | Planned |
| 4 | The center shall provide an interface through which the transit vehicle operator information can be maintained - either from the transit vehicle operator, center personnel, or other functions. | Planned |
| 5 | The center shall generate supplemental vehicle operator assignments as required due to change events that occur during the operating day. | Planned |