Transit upgrades mean talking buses

by Zander Kelly

Windsor’s buses are now talking to their riders.

Since late February, 10 Transit Windsor buses have been fitted with a system providing verbal and visual announcements regarding the location of the bus and the next stop on the route.

The system, costing $3 million, will include GPS upgrades to all Transit Windsor buses, including new bus stop signs and bus tracking technology.

Pat Delmore, executive director of Transit Windsor, says the upgrades are a long time coming.

“A number of transit properties across Canada began to implement (systems like this) as many as 10 years ago,” said Delmore. “While we weren’t required to, we wanted to do this because we felt it was the right thing to do.”

The first 10 upgraded buses, one for each model of bus Transit Windsor currently has, are being used to test the system and help work out technical issues. Once this is completed, the rest of the fleet will be upgraded. According to Delmore, this process may take weeks to months.

Another part of the the new system is the new “smart signs” that are slowly replacing the old yellow bus stop signs with blue ones. The new signs display the names of buses passing and a service number that can be called or texted with the stop identification number for an accurate indication of when the next bus will arrive. This part of the system is still being installed and there will be a formal announcement when it’s completed.

The systems were developed in cooperation with Strategic Mapping, a Toronto-based company, with Windsor specifically in mind.

“This is not an off-the-shelf system,” said Delmore. “This is a computer system that was built from the ground up for our city.”

Once all of the buses have been outfitted with a GPS, the third part of the new system will be released to the public. This application is a bus tracker app which will be available online. The app will allow the public to see the current location of all Transit Windsor buses on any route at any time. This will reduce the chance of riders missing buses as well as making customer complaints easier to solve.

Alan Connors is a visually impaired bus rider, and he is very happy with the new developments.

“For people like myself, some of the bus drivers forget your stop,” said Connors. “I’m not totally blind, but some of my friends are. Now they can ride the bus to the mall by themselves and not miss their stop.”

Delmore said while Windsor is not the first to have systems like this, they aim to be a step above the rest.