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Clara County SMART Paratransit Demonstration ProjectSanta
Clara County SMART Paratransit Demonstration ProjectPhoto by Jack Carroll, a freelance photographer in Santa Clara, California.
Proposal developed and submitted in 1993 by OUTREACH with technical assistance from public and private partners.
The three key components of the Smart Paratransit Project include a digital geographic database, automated routing and scheduling software, and a global positioning satellite (GPS)/ automatic vehicle location (AVL) and communication system.
1. Geo-database: The digital geographic database with updates, generously donated by Navigation Technologies of Sunnyvale, California, covers all of Santa Clara County as well as adjacent counties to facilitate both intracounty and intercounty travel. The 99%+ accurate and complete database contains all the detail required to support state-of-the-art in-vehicle navigation including route planning, guidance and positioning. The detailed information includes city and street names, block-by-block addresses ranges, traffic flow characteristics (capacity, speed limit, traffic signals, turn restrictions, etc.) and information on major facilities including such common paratransit destinations as medical facilities, public buildings, educational institutions, and transit terminals. All physical locations are defined in terms of latitude, longitude, and relative elevation and coordinates are stored to a precision of 1/100,000 of a degree or approximately 3.5 feet.
2. Scheduling/Routing: Automated scheduling and routing software (Trapeze-QV), a customized software package from Trapeze Software, Inc. (formerly UMA), was installed and fully operational in February 1995. The strength of this product is in its scheduling and routing attributes which schedules clients to appropriate vehicles considering many different parameters (acceptable client pick-up and drop-off times, individualized client loading times, equipment and seating availability of a vehicle, and any other special client needs or equipment) and producing optimum daily routes. OUTREACH staff operating the intelligent software have control over such variables as number, types and configuration of vehicles and vehicle shifts on a daily basis, street speed by size of street and time of day, types of disability codes and an abundance of general client current and historical information, identification of common destination locations, faring formulas, and can select to utilize any of the large number of additional capabilities/functions. The software processes rapidly both subscription (repetitive) and casual (non-repetitive) ride requests emphasizing optimization of resources.
The goal of this component of the project is to use automation to plan daily optimal routes where origins, destinations, common locations, and client requested times and equipment needs are grouped so that the most efficient routes with the maximum number of shared rides (several clients sharing a vehicle) are created. This is done in real-time as schedulers and dispatchers at 20 workstations field over 1,000 calls per day using an automated call distribution system. At the close of the business day, the driver itineraries for next day service are electronically sent to remote vendor sites throughout the county in order to be sure that OUTREACH can meet the 21 hours a day, seven days a week service. All changes such as cancellations or additional rides on the day of service are processed via the software on the dispatch screen. The software keeps track of vehicles with available seats which are the most proximal in time and distance so that changes can be easily accommodated in an efficient manner not wasteful of resources. This C/C++ language-based product runs in a client/server environment: two servers with over 20 workstations running a scheduling and dispatching application and multiple other administrative/operations running on a Novell network. On a nightly basis, the ride data from this system is automatically transferred across the network to an alternative platform for transportation accounting (ride sponsor invoicing and client accounts) and reporting.
3. AVL: The third key component is the Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) system provided by Trimble Navigation Inc. of Sunnyvale, California. Trimble's support for this project from conception to completion was invaluable. Securing a radio frequency was the green light needed to proceed with the Trimble equipment. Searching for an available frequency took two years and one was secured in October 1995. Our corporate partner, Motorola, was instrumental in advising OUTREACH on the subject of radio frequency. Motorola, as a subcontractor with Trimble, supplied radio and control station equipment. With this green light, Trimble engineered, integrated, assembled, tested and delivered a turn-key GPS-based AVL System for 40 paratransit vehicles (capable of expanding to up to 1,000 vehicles) to OUTREACH. This system integrates Trimble's AVL Manager display terminals and communications handling equipment with mobile radios and base station radios to provide current vehicle position information in order to enhance dispatch assignment decisions and intermodal connections to fixed route. This data is displayed in tabular form with detailed vehicle location information as well as being viewed on Trimble's StarView map display. The StarView display allows the user to view the reported position of all the vehicles in the fleet as an overlay on the map (which uses the database from Navigation Technologies) and offers several drop down windows for additional information. This GPS/AVL system also includes: continual polling of the entire fleet in 20 to 30 second intervals (data polled includes latitude/longitude, time, odometer reading, ignition status, mail response keys, and canned messages); vehicles equipped with differential GPS which reduces the reported positioning error to approximately 3 meters; and two way messaging with each vehicle having a 3 inch by 5 inch display head with a built in menu system by which a driver can track and respond to 8 current mail messages as well as 8 predefined status messages each maintaining 15 qualifiers at the time the vehicle is polled. This system utilizes a UNIX server (SUN Microsystems Spark 5) and resides on the same Novell network as the automated scheduling and routing product Trapeze-QV.
Completely unique to this demonstration project, at the request of OUTREACH, TSI developed the CAD interface linking Trimble's AVL Manager with Trapeze-QV in real-time. This interface sends pick-up and drop-off messages from Trapeze-QV to the vehicle via the AVL equipment. The driver can in turn respond to the messages (for example, "ride completed", "cancellation", etc.) and this information is reflected in the QV database. As the vendor dispatcher uses Trapeze-QV remotely, the vendor can actually communicate directly to their vehicles electronically with OUTREACH staff monitoring this communication and intervening when appropriate.
Intermodality: It is only with the three components in place that the model for intermodality becomes viable. TSI modified the Trapeze-QV to assist in scheduling eligible clients, for example, conditional clients, who can transfer on an intermodal paratransit/fixed route transit trip. During this demonstration, limited accessible fixed route information was used. This fixed route information was made available from the SCVTA as they have secured from TSI a separate Trapeze-FX database containing all the fixed route data that is used for other purposes but which was also used to complement this demonstration project. Trip requests for participating clients are automatically analyzed to determine if the origin or destination of the trip is within the corridor serviced by the fixed route. If this is true, the trip is split two segments, one or more paratransit and one fixed route. The fixed route segment is automatically selected based on the on-line fixed route schedule and the time requirement of the ride request. The paratransit legs are scheduled on available paratransit vehicles so that the intermodal connection is successful. Vehicle schedule adherence is monitored real time on the day of service to determine if the scheduled intermodal connection is still valid.
Evaluation Studies: Two independent evaluation studies were planned by the funding entities. U.C. Berkeley, Institute of Transportation Studies, has conducted the first study and the draft findings have been submitted to CalTrans. The second study contracted by the FTA, is being conducted by Cambridge Systematics and is still in progress. Some of the key findings of the final draft of the U.C. Berkeley Evaluation Study of the SMART Paratransit Project:
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