ISR Transit and Ubisense Implement North America’s First Fully Automated, Real-Time, Transit Yard Solution

ISR Transit’s VP of U.S. Sales Brian Frank announced that the company has successfully implemented its fully automated Bus Depot Management system with one of Quebec’s major public transportation agencies, Réseau de transport de Longueuil (RTL). ISR’s transit yard solution utilizes a proprietary, automated real-time location system developed by Ubisense, a provider of asset-tracking location solutions, to completely integrate parking management with driver and maintenance assignments for improved planning and fleet availability.

Bus Depot Management fully integrates with Giro’s Hastus scheduling system as well as Daily Crew and Ops.

RTL is utilizing Bus Depot Management to regulate 500 buses and service vehicles spread across three yards within the service area. The completely automated system removes all human error as it provides detection, identification, placement and assignment of all vehicles across all yards.

“Previously, an employee would walk the garages three to four times every day to manually inventory and track the buses for service operation,” stated Suzie LeHouillier, director of Projects for RTL. “Now, the system provides that information instantaneously, in real-time.”

Upon dispatch inputting their bus needs, such as articulated, seating capacity and accessibility, Bus Depot Management immediately identifies the RTL buses that are ready for service. Drivers simply touch their smart card to the convenient kiosks located in each yard to obtain their bus assignment, which includes the precise location at which the bus is parked. At the end of a shift, an easy-to-read display panel located at the yard entrance identifies the lane in which the vehicle is to be parked. These lanes help the operations and maintenance departments efficiently get the buses to the appropriate area for bus washing, repairs, maintenance checks, training and more.

“ISR’s Bus Depot Management system is the first completely automated, real-time, transit yard
solution in North America,” stated Brian Frank of ISR. “With no human intervention, there is less chance of error. The cost efficiencies are tremendous.”

This past May, RTL won the prestigious 2013 “Grand Prix of Excellence in Transport” award in the
Information Technology category for the ISR Bus Depot Management system. This award was presented by the Association québécoise des transports (AQTR). ISR Transit integrated its award-winning transit yard solution with Ubisense and Solotech to provide a turnkey solution for RTL. Ubisense provided the bus location tags and network of sensors within the three garages while Solotech provided the hardware installation.

“I believe our operations staff stated it best when they said, ‘It works by itself!’” commented Suzie LeHouillier.