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Case Studies - City of Ottawa, Transit Services (OC Transpo)
» http://www.octranspo.com
We completed a two year project for re-engineering internal legacy systems for the City of Ottawa – Transit Services Business Applications Management Group. THE CHALLENGE
AVLC (Automated Vehicle Location and Control) is a real-time automatic vehicle location and control system that permits full time operational control monitoring of transit vehicles during normal and emergency situations. It consists of a passive vehicle location subsystem: readers installed at strategic locations throughout the city, non-removable vehicle tags on all transit vehicles, which are read by the readers, a data communication network to transmit/receive data from the readers to the central data repository and radio communication system to provide communication between transit vehicle operators and the transit service controllers. The original AVLC project was developed on OpenVMS/VAX platform with a RDB database. Due to changes in technology, and new transit business requirements, there is a requirement to convert and upgrade all applications to the Windows platform, with an Oracle database. This also ensures compliance with the City of Ottawa computing standards. THE SOLUTION
As part of the AVLC re-engineering project the following modules were redeveloped: SCM-COBA (Service Control Manager - Communication of Bus Operator Assignment)
The SCM-COBA application primarily contains two major modules:
- SCM - which assists the transit service controllers and the superintendents to maintain on-street service, by providing them with service related information that is relevant to a service problem, such as detour, extra bus status, schedule adherence etc.
- COBA - which handles the assignment of buses to operators. As an operator arrives to commence their work, they are allocated a vehicle of a suitable type by the starter/placer, who maintains a record of vehicles locations within the garage.
Key Features:
- The application determines the correct vehicle type for the work assigned to the operator; whether it needs passenger counting equipment durability, fuel capacity etc.
- RF Radios present on the top of the vehicle is matched to the vehicle, so when the operator calls in to transit control, the controller automatically knows which operator, bus and route is calling in. This information is crucial in emergency situations.
- Provides on-street location of vehicles.
- Provides service status updates to the 560 telephone information system and passenger information displays.
- Provide for replacement buses for defective in-service vehicles throughout the operating day.
- Generate reports based on historic data in order to improve the overall operation of the transit fleet.
- SCM and COBA originally were two different systems, which required the user to switch between applications to do their job. The two systems were integrated into one single window, thereby giving maximum information within a single view.
RSUM (Relational Service Update Manager)
RSUM provides the system interface to schedule for creation, maintenance of the planned schedule data, operational and system parameters. Key Features:
- Provides interface to external applications such as Trapeze Schedule Application (the trip planning System), Bus Stop Inventory.
- Provides the user the ability to customize the information being transferred over from trip planning, by making modifications for specific routes on specific days.
- Ability to reuse the customized information in the form of templates for future planning of schedules.
System Development and Integration
The system is used extensively by transit operations staff to monitor the integrity of transit services delivery. It is also used by the Transit Schedule & Service Development department to determine overall transit fleet performance, schedule adherence and route management.
The system is highly integrated with other transit applications, such as Customer Contact Relations (CCR), Work Management System(WMS), and to provide general information to all staff on the many elements of transit service delivery and schedules.
The original AVLC was designed and developed in-house starting in 1989. It took six years with a team of five consultants to design and develop the system. The new re-engineered system was developed at 20% the original development cost. |
