How Cities Like Chicago Can Do More with Less to Reduce Winter Woes In Spite of Shrunken Transit Budgets

Real-time Passenger Information from NextBus Provides the Key

Chicago typifies what’s happening to municipal transit systems across the country. Cities large and small must endure drastically reduced budgets that reflect widespread tax and revenue shortfalls. Even though ridership has been increasing, the tax revenue that is also vital to supporting those transit operations has fallen dramatically as unemployment has risen in United States. Thus, Chicago’s CTA was forced to slash costs in ways that are affecting their riders at the coldest time of the year.

The CTA cuts were implemented February 2010 on 119 bus routes and seven rail lines. In addition, 41 bus routes have reduced hours of service, and nine express bus routes have been cut. CTA President Richard Rodriguez indicated that more than 1,000 employees have also been laid off.

How Real-time Passenger Information System Benefits Can Balance the Effect of Budget Reductions

Maximize system efficiency to get the most of available people and capital assets. A myriad of problems confront transit executives as they work to achieve on-time results both consistently and cost effectively. Intelligent transportation technologies from NextBus empower executives by showing them what is working well and what is working poorly for every vehicle and every route. In addition,
easy to generate reports point the way to facilitating changes that improve on-time performance on all routes.
Make system wide scheduling highly predictable to benefit both managers and riders. An efficient transit system requires a high degree of predictability. It is extremely difficult to provide that predictability without AVL
& APC systems that provide continuous updates—and takes into consideration random factors such as vehicle breakdowns, traffic jams, and unexpected emergencies. NextBus was designed from the ground up to provide accurate arrival times across a variety of routes.
Put accurate ridership and other operations performance data to get the most from every bus and every route. Optimal transit efficiency depends not only on getting buses and trains to each stop in time, but also on the balancing of passenger loads to prevent both overcrowding and empty vehicles. Our passenger counting capabilities smooth passenger demand spikes throughout the day and reduce demand for additional vehicles during peak periods.
Balance the high cost of fuel by minimizing mileage. Real-time passenger information enables managers to minimize the use of expensive fuel without compromising service levels. They can improve efficiencies by making a broad range of operational changes from major to minor. Thus, you can serve more passengers and more routes while keeping bus mileage to a minimum.

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