Wireless bus schedule updates are on the way for St. Albert transit riders.
The city will soon begin testing a new system that will allow transit users to access real-time bus updates from any web-enabled device, such as a smartphone.
“We’re always trying to provide accurate customer information and this is going to give us another tool to allow our riders to gain information that they need at their fingertips,” said Dawn Fedorvich, co-ordinator of customer service for St. Albert Transit.
St. Albert will be the second municipality in Alberta, after Banff, to use the technology when the system rolls out in May. In the meantime, those who subscribe to transit’s eNotice service will be invited to test the system.
The service, known by the trade name NextBus, will be offered through www.nextbus.com. The site will post arrival times for the next three buses on the chosen route and allow users to see where their bus is on the route, Fedorvich said.
“We think it will be especially valuable during winter season, with delays because of snow and traffic, and also during construction season when we often experience delays as well,” she said.
St. Albert’s transit buses have been equipped with GPS tracking for two years. The system has allowed customer service personnel to look up a bus’s actual position and provide status updates to callers. The new system uses a software program that reads the real-time GPS information coming from the buses on the roads and cross-references this data with the city’s transit schedule.
The live transit information will be web-based for the first several months.
“We are hoping this year to develop scheduling apps but we’re not really ready for that yet,” Fedorvich said.
Adopting GPS tracking cost the city $70,000. Adding this second phase cost $100,000 and will add $5,000 a month to transit operating costs.
Mayor Nolan Crouse acknowledged that the cost is steep but said the added service is necessary and could help increase ridership.
“I’m just thrilled for it,” he said. “I think we have to realize that this is an expectation that people would have of us, that eventually you would have the ability to track where buses are.”
