Hampton Roads Transit buses to use GPS for better service

By Tom Holden
The Virginian-Pilot

The one thing that really steams Marvin Rogers about riding the public bus is not knowing when it will arrive.

Rogers, a regular customer of Hampton Roads Transit, recently waited for the No. 1 at Charlotte Street for a ride to DePaul Medical Center.

But Rogers had no idea when the bus would pick him up, even though the schedule said 1:54 p.m.

At 2:20 p.m., the bus was still not there.

"I have no idea," said Rogers, who was heading to a 2:30 p.m. doctor's appointment. "They show up whenever they want to."

To help in its battle against untimely service, HRT is going high tech.

Dispatchers soon will use GPS equipment that will monitor the location of every bus moving in Hampton Roads.

Once dispatchers know the location of each bus, they can compare that to the schedule for that route, the time, and the bus position in relation to bus stops along the route.

Software will help decide if the driver is behind or ahead of schedule. When the timing is off, the system will tell drivers to adjust their driving accordingly.

It's the latest move by HRT to entice people out of their cars. Last month, HRT said it was developing a new express bus service with bigger seats and wireless capability to allow customers to use their laptops on the road.

In January, HRT officials announced plans to develop a partnership with technology giant Google that would allow customers to easily find the right bus by plugging in street names to the search engine. In 2005, HRT bolted bike racks on many of its buses.

The latest effort, called "The Navigator," aims to close gaps in service.

"We are nowhere near 100 percent for on-time performance," said David Sullivan, HRT's vice president of information technology.

In fact, he said HRT does not know what its on-time performance actually is because there is no way to track it systematically.

The new system will help solve that problem.

"The first couple of months it's in use will be used to collect data and see how we're doing," he said.

For customers like Rogers, the new service will have another useful feature. At select bus stops, about 20 in 2008, electronic displays will tell customers when their bus is scheduled to arrive, eliminating any guesswork.

"If they can do that, it would be great," Rogers said.

HRT is installing the equipment on 260 of its 340 buses. Older buses that are scheduled for replacement, such as the Downtown NET and the Oceanfront's VB Wave Trolley, will not be equipped with the new system. That will come later as finances allow.

Buses can be late for many reasons, including ordinary traffic congestion or bus driver inattentiveness to schedules. Sometimes, passengers can slow a bus if they don't have the proper fares when boarding, Sullivan said.

The $7.9 million system is one of the most expensive investments HRT has made in recent years. The agency says it should be ready to go by mid-October.

The contractors are Siemens, a technology firm, and Giro, a Montreal-based company that develops software for transit services.

"It's our largest technology investment we've ever made," said James Toscano, vice president of public affairs.

Tom Holden, (757) 446-2331, tom.holden@pilotonline.com