Now playing: In-house innovation on the bus
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If you frequently ride C-TRAN, you’ve likely noticed digital display screens on board some of our newer buses. Thanks to the C-TRAN Maintenance team, we’ll be making better use of those soon—and may have just saved more than $1 million in the process.
How? By integrating them with an existing software system, and a little in-house ingenuity.
“It’s kind of a no-brainer,” says Matthew Wiley, C-TRAN’s Assistant Manager of Transit Vehicle Electronics. “We do need to be diligent with our money, because it’s taxpayers’ money.”
Wiley recently completed a leadership program through the Washington State Transit Association. He spearheaded the display screen project as part of the program. The result, he says, benefits not only the agency itself, but transit riders and the general public.
In recent years, C-TRAN has made only limited use of on-board display screens that some newer buses come equipped with. That’s because they’re connected to a relatively obscure, outdated software system that often resulted in glitches when uploading content. Wiley’s solution: Instead of installing an entirely new system, convert the setup to integrate with a content management system C-TRAN already uses for employee communication inside the walls of the agency.
To do this, Wiley converted a power source connected to the screen inside the bus, put in new cabling and a network switch, and connected it remotely to the existing C-TRAN network.
Wiley received an estimated cost from an outside company to install a new system. Including equipment, software and licensing fees, it came to more than $32,000 for the initial setup.
Wiley’s solution: $371.40.
“If we were to equip 122 buses through a vendor, it would be over $1 million,” Wiley says. “Doing it in-house was only a fraction of that.”
So far, Wiley’s setup has only been implemented on one vehicle: bus number 4043. That bus is out in service every day, displaying a rotation of messages. Those include project updates for The Vine on Highway 99, C-TRAN career opportunities and more.
C-TRAN will expand the use of its on-board displays in the coming months, and may consider adding them to older buses that don’t currently have screens. Each will use Wiley’s setup.
Displaying digital messages in public spaces isn’t new. But Wiley is pleased with the simple solution that allows C-TRAN to do so in a cost-effective way that’s valuable to the agency and the community. It’s also another win for a C-TRAN Maintenance department with a history of in-house innovation.
As on-board displays are integrated more broadly into the fleet, it will become possible to use them in new ways, Wiley says. That may even include real-time, route-specific info for a bus as it moves along the route.
“This is a simple solution with unlimited possibilities,” Wiley says. “As technology advances, we can add new features.”