One of the global leaders in applied informatics for the transportation industry, Iteris Inc., has been awarded a US$934,000 contract for design services from the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District (AC Transit) in California for a corridor travel time improvement project.
The project includes the implementation of transit signal priority (TSP), bus stop improvements, real-time passenger information system, and deployment of an Adaptive Traffic Signal Control system.
This contract continues Iteris’ involvement on AC Transit’s popular Line 97, which spans 12.5 miles (20km) along a number of major corridors in the San Francisco Bay Area. The design phase of the project is currently underway, with deployment anticipated in 2018. TSP is a highly effective tool to reduce delay and improve schedule reliability for transit operations. Currently the service time for this route is 134 minutes. Once the project improvements are fully deployed, a roundtrip travel time is expected to be reduced by as much as 15%.
Iteris specializes in applied informatics, which involves the collection, aggregation, and analysis of big data on traffic, roads, and weather, to extract relevant insights that make road networks safer and travel more efficient.
The company has provided transit signal operations for over 30 agencies covering more than 1,000 intersections across the USA. It is currently involved in similar transit projects in Los Angeles and Orange County in California, as well as Chicago, Illinois, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Iteris’s complete TransitHelper TSP system is comprised of four components:
Priority Request Generator – Works with existing on-bus vehicle location systems to create transit priority messages;
Bus to intersection communication system Uses public safety radio frequency bands or the 5.9GHz DSRC (dedicated short-range communications) waveband;
TransitHelper Processor – The interface for communications between transit vehicles and intersection traffic controllers;
Central Monitoring and Reporting – Back-office platform that provides predictive and actionable information.
“This project will improve transit operations and the overall transit customer experience by reducing traffic congestion and improving intersection efficiencies along Line 97,” stated Ramin Massoumi, general manager and senior vice president of transportation systems at Iteris.
“Upgrading the corridor transportation technology infrastructure will produce cascading benefits that include improvements to signal operations, resulting in reduced fuel consumption and vehicle emissions, ridership growth through improved schedule reliability, and improved air quality. These benefits and goals are consistent with AC Transit’s strategy to maximize operational benefit and efficiency and achieve the San Francisco Bay Area’s Transit Sustainability Project performance metrics.”
