The CTA provides public transportation for three coastal counties and previously handled bus scheduling using Excel spreadsheets, which while an old-school method, worked well enough prior to Katrina. But with the mass exodus from the coast, the transit authority found its passenger pick up points as far as two miles apart in some instances. The distance caused a number of logistical and operational challenges, such as too many busses on the road and late arrivals.
“Not only was the population displaced and we’re trying to re-establish our service, the local governments lost their property and sales tax base, so we knew we were looking at financial challenges,” said Kevin Coggin, executive director of the CTA.
While computerized fleet management and scheduling systems aren’t new, the edge the CTA gained in deploying various programs from RouteMatch Software has revitalized the agency in the wake of coastal Mississippi’s recovery and brought in additional riders.
Going paperless with its scheduling and fleet management also helped make the CTA a more vital cog in the affairs of Mississippi’s Harrison County emergency management agency.
Following Katrina, the demand for the CTA’s services rose, as did the recognition of the value that public transportation provides in the area. With the routing software in place, the CTA now has the ability and responsibility to manage emergency transportation needs and has a designated seat at the county’s emergency operations center.
Coggin explained that in the event of a hurricane or other disaster, the CTA is tasked with providing transportation to all people in Harrison County that are in harm’s way that want a ride to a local shelter. A year-round registration process was instituted where people can register their address and contact information with the CTA.
Jay Curtis, the CTA’s operations director, maintains a database of that information so the transit authority is prepared in case of another disaster. This way routes can be preplanned and the CTA knows ahead of time the resources it needs to commit to emergency transportation.
Coggin said the CTA is also planning to use RouteMatch’s “call-out” module in the future, which will allow the authority to send electronic messages to all people in the database — a proactive approach to making sure residents schedule their rides to shelters.
So what’s the catch on the technology? Coggin expressed his overall satisfaction with what the software provides, but admitted that some fine-tuning was in order during the initial stages of rolling out the system. He said there is a major investment of time and resources at the beginning in getting all the information uploaded to the program and setting it up.
“You have to feed a lot of data into it and there are parameters you have to set, so it takes a full commitment from the user to recognize the full value and efficiency,” Coggin said. “That is what CTA wasn’t able to do up front. I would like it to be more user-friendly going forward in so far as being able to tweak it and programming the trips.”
[This article was originally published by Government Technhology.]
