The Fox Cities Transit Commission met 01/24/2023. The two action items that garnered the most discussion, were related to the potential new multi-level mixed-use transit center Valley Transit would like to build. There was, however, another action item that did result in some slight discussion. This was the request for authorization to award a Computer Aided Dispatch and Automated Vehicle Location (CAD/AVL) software contract to GMV. The commission ended up approving the request unanimously.
A transcript of the complete discussion is available for download.
The request was accompanied by a 3 page memo. Transit Operations Specialist Dave Vickman did not read the whole thing, but did provide a quick summary.
A CAD/AVL system basically consists of some hardware onboard the buses that communicated with a number of systems such as the farebox, the passenger counters, the interior signs, and the voice announcements. It also pulls in GPS coordinates and shares that data with software in the cloud which is then accessed by operations and managers to monitor the system. The information is also used on things like the bus tracking app and website. Per Operations Specialist Vickman, “It’s critical data for us to monitor the system as well as for the customer and federal and state reporting.”
The current system that Valley Transit uses (Double Map) is no longer going to be supported after the end of 2023, so they released a Request For Proposals (RFP) in November 2022. They received five responses, and the one from GMV scored the highest. The City of Waukesha recently started using GMV, so a Valley Transit representative went to Waukesha, asked a lot of questions, and received a good reference regarding GMV.
The one drawback was that, unlike with Double Map, GMV does not include a rider app with their system. As a result, Valley Transit will be looking for a third party to provide the app. He noted that a number of the proposals that were submitted did not include apps, and those that did were of considerable lesser quality than the app Valley Transit currently uses.
So, the next project will be for Valley Transit to find a new rider app to switch over to when their contract with Double Map ends at the end of the year.
The commission voted unanimously to approve the contract.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1063051&GUID=602B8132-671A-4D2C-8CF7-98DE35511D51
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