What does the passenger transportation system cover?
Buses, vans, coaches.
Public, corporate, and school transport.
Transporting employees, pupils, and citizens.
If your vehicles are taking fixed routes, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t control them. Traffic in many cities can still be characterized as hectic and irregular, even if the routes are fixed. So to take a route and to perform it are two different things.
What do you think won’t happen with your drivers?
- Skipping stops – in a hurry, because the route was not updated or the driver took a shortcut.
- Violating schedules. Because of traffic, late start, and route deviations.
- Not taking the route. In case of illness, breakdowns, accidents.
But it happens all the time, and the result is the same – people are late for work or have tiring rides in overcrowded buses. It is especially dangerous in the time of COVID-19, and it’s another problem that we are trying to solve, among others.
How does the SHUTTLE system change passenger transportation?
SHUTTLE doesn’t fight the consequences of a problem, but its initial cause. Let’s see why problems with passenger transportation even happen and how to tackle them?
Problem: Disorganization
Why are drivers sure that no one will know about a violation? Because everything is allowed in chaos.
Transport, stops, routes, and schedules exist only on paper. Papers are lost, hard to change, and can’t be accessed remotely. A disorganized office produces negligent drivers.
Solution #1: Structured transportation network
SHUTTLE digitalizes it all to create a structured transport management system on your laptop.
- Transport. The list of vehicles that can perform routes. You always know the transport system capacity, and types of available vehicles, and be sure you meet the demand for transport.
- Stops. Displayed in the list and on the map. You see the big picture of your destinations on a single screen – not a single point is out of sight.
- Routes. SHUTTLE interconnects stops to achieve the shortest time to destination and mileage for each route. Routes give an overview of your perfectly structured transportation network.
- Schedules. Assigned to a route shows not only what should happen with your transport, but when.
Stops, routes, transport, and schedules combined constitute your fixed-route transport management system. In your new system, you see all planned and current rides, and can easily search every element of it to adjust to changing circumstances.
Solution #2: From structure to management
Manage your transportation network to perfect it. Here are just some examples:
SHUTTLE offers search and filtration to identify stops not involved in routes and rides without assigned transport. That’s how you are sure not to miss a single element of the system and make a transport management system complete.
- If you need to change the sequence of stops, do it by drag-and-drop – it’s literally one click.
- If your transport has to keep to another schedule – on holidays, weekends, during the roadworks period – you can set up many schedules for specific dates.
All that concerns management is simple as drag-and-drop and even simpler.
Problem: Lack of control
Route performance and schedule compliance are controlled only by drivers’ words.
Solution: SHUTTLE’s telematics interface
SHUTTLE offers GPS tracking and fleet management options for your fixed-route transport.
- Track transport movements in real-time. SHUTTLE displays transport movements on the map or the timeline based on GPS. You see vehicles moving and visiting route points, plus their estimated arrival time and deviations from the schedule.
- Get event-based notifications for a prompt reaction. The system notifies transport managers or dispatchers of any events on the way – ride progress, late/early arrivals, and emergencies.
Problem: passengers know nothing
The only way for a passenger to get a bus is to hope and wait until you introduce SHUTTLE mobile app.
Solution: SHUTTLE mobile app
SHUTTLE app shares the location of transport with passengers, and that’s how it works.
- Vehicles send their GPS location to SHUTTLE. The app shows the location and movement of transport on the map to passengers.
- SHUTTLE compares it to the schedule and displays the estimated arrival time, and if the transport arrives early or late.
- Passengers can access the necessary routes by scanning a QR code. After that, they get route details/stops/schedule/estimated arrival time and live movement of buses on their smartphones.
- Passengers can download routes of their buses on mobile, not search through all routes.
*QR code is sent to the employees’ emails or posted at the pick-up/drop-off points where passengers can scan it. Some companies went further and placed QR codes on their intranet web pages to make codes accessible online.
As a result, first passengers see the bus coming, and then they go to the stop, not vice-versa. This is how we make passenger transportation focused on people.
Problem: Nobody analyzes the performance
Is there room for improvement? Definitely. Do you know where? Not exactly.
The most cost-effective transportation and the highest level of service are data-driven. If you don’t analyze, you won’t improve.
Solution: Transport performance analytics by SHUTTLE
First, SHUTTLE provides real-time analytics and statistics on how your transport performs. Second, SHUTTLE offers detailed performance reports and ride history.
The dashboard shows the summary of your transport system – the number of stops, routes, rides on time, early/late, with no unit assigned – on one screen.
The timeline is more focused on ride progress rather than vehicle location and movements. Thus, it identifies early/late arrivals and problematic rides by color marking and special indicators.
In reports, you’ll find data on visited and skipped stops, early and late arrivals, and route deviations to identify areas for improvement.
Problem: All done manually
Find transport, create routes, compile schedules, and tell drivers to follow them – it already takes much time. But when it comes to introducing changes…Let’s not think about it unless you have a special tool.
Solution: SHUTTLE automation tools
SHUTTLE automates most of the transport management processes:
- Assigns transport to routes.
- Identifies visited stops based on GPS data.
- Creates new routes based on the schedules and operation patterns of the existing ones.
- Prompts transport replacement on the route in case of emergency.
- Changes schedules based on certain dates and conditions.
It’s a small portion of what you can automate in SHUTTLE.
The summary of problem-solving for a passenger transportation system
- People no longer wait for transport. They know the arrival time to their pick-up/drop-off point, if the vehicle arrives with a delay, early, or won’t arrive at all.
- People see transport moving in real-time to catch the necessary transport anywhere throughout its route.
- Disputable situations resolve. If a driver claims that the reason for being late was a passenger, the system will prove or deny it.
- Transport Departments track all rides in real-time and historically.
- Transportation services improve – drivers and passengers follow the schedules and are rewarded or penalized for compliance.
SHUTTLE system is designed for passenger transportation but is not limited to it. Generally, it covers all vehicles following fixed routes and associated processes. Let’s end where we started.
Let SHUTTLE take care of your transport and passengers. KLOUDIP will make it happen.
