Washington DC Department of Transportation Modernized Bus Fleet Tracking System Through TransitIQ

The U.S. capital city adopted state-of-art bus fleet tracking system that raised rider satisfaction and saved cost.
01.11.22

The Challenge

The District of Columbia Government’s Department of Transportation (DDOT) manages and maintains the transportation infrastructure across our nation’s capital including the district’s mass transit services. DDOT’s legacy vehicle tracking system had been in place for some time and the agency was looking for new ways to save costs and boost performance. Specific functionality was needed to improve data collection frequency and reliability across its bus fleet.

Our Approach

EastBanc Technologies proposed an alternative approach to DDOT’s legacy system—TransitIQ. It is a powerful, comprehensive and innovative business intelligence solution for public transit agencies. Using a combination of smartphone-based GPS, IoT, and cloud technology, TransitIQ provides a 360-degree view of individual vehicles and DDOT’s overall fleet (location, speed, and direction). Powered by the cloud (no internal infrastructure is required), TransitIQ automatically scales to handle peak traffic times and a surge in position reports—without interruption or delay. TransitIQ can uncover vital efficiency gains across the entire system, specific routes, buses, trains, etc.

EastBanc Technologies also provides DDOT with mobile applications, trip planning screens, and bus stop displays. This provides greater transparency to riders in the form of real-time data and situational awareness of DDOT’s transportation network, wherever they are.

The Results

The solution provides DDOT with “one source of truth” about its fleet of buses. Vital facts about fleet movements are reported in an intuitive, dashboard-based format. The resulting optimization increases rider satisfaction, prevents delays or bunching, and optimizes transit coverage.

With TransitIQ, informed decision-making becomes a standard:

  • Dashboard Reporting—DDOT can view a dashboard-based operational picture of performance across the fleet and investigate areas that don’t meet expectations.
  • Data Metrics—By analyzing raw data in the back end, DDOT can better measure goals against key metrics.
  • Historical Trends—DDOT can measure current performance against historical trends to better inform decisions.
  • Office 360 Integration—Forget about manually pulling reports. The Microsoft Office 360 add-on for TransitIQ delivers the convenience of viewing and sharing live performance reports with agency stakeholders right from PowerPoint. This brings about dramatic cost-savings over legacy, hardware-based systems and allows DDOT to track the location of buses more reliably than its current technology.