Hartford Area ITS Architecture Update

Element Expanded Functional Requirements: MTD Transit Dispatch

Functional Area: Transit Center Fare Management
  1. The center shall manage the actual value of transit fares for each segment of each regular transit route, including the transmission of the information to transit vehicles and transit stops or stations.
  2. The center shall provide the capability for a system operator to manage the transit fares and control the exchange of transit fare information.
  3. The center shall process the financial requests from the transit vehicles or roadside and manage an interface to a Financial Institution.
  4. The center shall support the payment of transit fare transactions using data provided by the traveler cards / payment instruments.
  5. The center shall collect data on fare payment violations and send the data, including images of the violator, to the appropriate enforcement agency.
  6. The center shall process requests for transit fares to be paid in advance.
  7. The center shall process requests for the advanced payment of tolls and parking lot charges as well as other non-transportation services, e.g. yellow-pages services.
  8. The center shall be capable of establishing emergency fare structures to override all other fares during disasters, states of emergency, or evacuations.
  9. The center shall maintain a list of invalid traveler credit identities or bad tag lists that can be forwarded to transit vehicles and transit stops or stations.
  10. The center shall collect fare statistics data to implement variable and flexible fare structures.
  11. The center shall exchange fare and load information with other transit management centers, including potential Centralized Payments facilities.
  12. The center shall provide transit fare information to other centers, including traveler information providers upon request.
Functional Area: Transit Center Fixed-Route Operations
  1. The center shall generate transit routes and schedules based on such factors as parameters input by the system operator, road network conditions, incident information, operational data on current routes and schedules, and digitized map data.
  2. The center shall provide the interface to the system operator to control the generation of new routes and schedules (transit services) including the ability to review and update the parameters used by the routes and schedules generation processes and to initiate these processes
  3. The center shall be able to generate special routes and schedules to support an incident, disaster, evacuation, or other emergency.
  4. The center shall dispatch fixed route or flexible route transit vehicles
  5. The center shall collect transit operational data for use in the generation of routes and schedules.
  6. The center shall provide instructions or corrective actions to the transit vehicle operators based upon operational needs.
  7. The center shall manage large deviations of individual transit vehicles, deviations in rural areas, and deviations of large numbers of vehicles.
  8. The center shall generate the necessary corrective actions which may involve more than the vehicles concerned and more far reaching action, such as, the introduction of extra vehicles, wide area signal priority by traffic management, the premature termination of some services, etc.
  9. The center shall exchange information with Maintenance and Construction Operations concerning work zones, roadway conditions, asset restrictions, work plans, etc.
  10. The center shall disseminate up-to-date schedules and route information to other centers for fixed and flexible route services.
  11. The center shall provide an interface to the archive data repository to enable the operator to retrieve historical operating data for use in planning transit routes and schedules.
Functional Area: Transit Center Information Services
  1. The center shall provide travelers using public transportation with traffic and advisory information upon request. Such information may include transit routes, schedules, transfer options, fares, real-time schedule adherence, current incidents, weather conditions, and special events.
  2. The center shall provide transit information to the media including details of deviations from schedule of regular transit services.
  3. The center shall exchange transit schedules, real-time arrival information, fare schedules, and general transit service information with other transit organizations to support transit traveler information systems.
  4. The center shall provide transit service information to traveler information service providers including routes, schedules, schedule adherence, and fare information as well as transit service information during evacuation.
  5. The center shall enable yellow pages (including non-motorized transportation) information to be output to the traveler.
  6. The center shall broadcast transit advisory data, including alerts and advisories pertaining to major emergencies, or man made disasters.
Functional Area: Transit Center Multi-Modal Coordination
  1. The center shall coordinate schedules and services between transit agencies, traffic management, maintenance and construction operations, parking management, and other surface or air transportation modes.
  2. The center shall share transfer cluster and transfer point information with multimodal transportation service providers, other transit agencies, and traveler information service providers. A transfer cluster is a collection of stop points, stations, or terminals where transfers can be made conveniently.
  3. The center shall accept requests from traffic management to change routes and schedules as part of the implementation of demand management strategies.
  4. The center shall coordinate transit services for special events, planning services for the event and managing transit services on the day of the event.
  5. The center shall provide transit operations personnel with the capability to control and monitor transit service coordination activities.
Functional Area: Transit Center Paratransit Operations
  1. The center shall process trip requests for demand responsive transit services, i.e. paratransit. Sources of the requests may include traveler information service providers.
  2. The center shall monitor the operational status of the demand response vehicles including status of passenger pick-up and drop-off.
  3. The center shall generate demand response transit (including paratransit) routes and schedules based on such factors as parameters input by the system operator, what other demand responsive transit schedules have been planned, the availability and location of vehicles, the relevance of any fixed transit routes and schedules, road network information, and incident information.
  4. The center shall dispatch demand response (paratransit) transit vehicles.
  5. The center shall exchange information with Maintenance and Construction Operations concerning work zones, roadway conditions, asset restrictions, work plans, etc.
  6. The center shall disseminate up-to-date schedules and route information to other centers for demand responsive transit services (paratransit).
  7. The center shall collect the log of passenger boardings and alightings from the paratransit vehicles.
Functional Area: Transit Center Security
  1. The center shall monitor transit vehicle operational data to determine if the transit vehicle is off-route and assess whether a security incident is occurring.
  2. The center shall receive reports of emergencies on-board transit vehicles entered directly be the transit vehicle operator or from a traveler through interfaces such as panic buttons or alarm switches.
  3. The center shall support the back-office portion of functionality to authenticate transit vehicle operators.
  4. The center shall exchange transit incident information along with other service data with other transit agencies.
  5. The center shall receive information pertaining to a wide-area alert such as weather alerts, disaster situations, or child abductions. This information may come from Emergency Management or from other Alerting and Advisory Systems.
  6. The center shall send wide-area alert information to travelers (on-board transit vehicles or at stations/stops) and transit vehicle operators.
  7. The center shall coordinate the response to security incidents involving transit with other agencies including Emergency Management, other transit agencies, media, traffic management, and traveler information service providers.
  8. The center shall receive threat information and status on the integrity of the transit infrastructure.
  9. The center shall provide support to remotely disable (or reset the disabling of) a transit vehicle in service.
Functional Area: Transit Center Vehicle Tracking
  1. The center shall monitor the locations of all transit vehicles within its network.
  2. The center shall determine adherence of transit vehicles to their assigned schedule.
  3. The center shall support an interface with a map update provider, or other appropriate data sources, through which updates of digitized map data can be obtained and used as a background for transit tracking and dispatch.
  4. The center shall provide transit operational data to traveler information service providers.
  5. The center shall provide collected transit probe data to traffic management centers and traveler information service providers for use in measuring current traffic conditions.
Functional Area: Transit Garage Maintenance
  1. The center shall collect operational and maintenance data from transit vehicles.
  2. The center shall monitor the condition of a transit vehicle to analyze brake, drive train, sensors, fuel, steering, tire, processor, communications equipment, and transit vehicle mileage to identify mileage based maintenance, out-of-specification or imminent failure conditions.
  3. The center shall generate transit vehicle maintenance schedules that identify the maintenance or repair to be performed and when the work is to be done.
  4. The center shall generate transit vehicle availability listings, current and forecast, to support transit vehicle assignment planning based, in part, on the transit vehicle maintenance schedule.
  5. The center shall assign technicians to a transit vehicle maintenance schedule, based upon such factors as personnel eligibility, work assignments, preferences and seniority.
  6. The center shall verify that the transit vehicle maintenance activities were performed correctly, using the transit vehicle's status, the maintenance personnel's work assignment, and the transit maintenance schedules.
  7. The center shall generate a time-stamped maintenance log of all maintenance activities performed on a transit vehicle.
  8. The center shall provide transit operations personnel with the capability to update transit vehicle maintenance information and receive reports on all transit vehicle operations data.
Functional Area: Transit Vehicle Operator Assignment
  1. The center shall maintain records of a transit vehicle operator's performance. This may be done utilizing standardized performance evaluation criteria set forth by governmental regulations and transit operating company policies, assessing the transit vehicle operator's driving history, and assessing comments from the transit vehicle operator's supervisor(s) as well as noting any moving violations or accidents, supervisor comments, government regulations, and company policies.
  2. The center shall assess the transit vehicle operator's availability based on previous work assignments, accumulated hours, plus health and vacation commitments.
  3. The center shall assign transit vehicle operators to transit schedules based on their eligibility, route preferences, seniority, and transit vehicle availability.
  4. The center shall provide an interface through which the transit vehicle operator information can be maintained - either from the transit vehicle operator, center personnel, or other functions.
  5. The center shall generate supplemental vehicle operator assignments as required due to change events that occur during the operating day.
Functional Area: Transit Data Collection
  1. The center shall collect transit management data such as transit fares and passenger use, transit services, paratransit operations, transit vehicle maintenance data, etc.
  2. The center shall assign quality control metrics and meta-data to be stored along with the data. Meta-data may include attributes that describe the source and quality of the data and the conditions surrounding the collection of the data.
  3. The center shall receive and respond to requests from ITS Archives for either a catalog of the transit data or for the data itself.
  4. The center shall be able to produce sample products of the data available.
Functional Area: Transit Evacuation Support
  1. The center shall manage the use of transit resources to support evacuation and subsequent reentry of a population in the vicinity of a disaster or other emergency.
  2. The center shall coordinate regional evacuation plans with Emergency Management - identifying the transit role in an evacuation and the transit resources that would be used.
  3. The center shall coordinate the use of transit and school bus fleets during an evacuation, supporting evacuation of those with special needs and the general population.
  4. The center shall adjust and update transit service and fare schedules and provide that information to other agencies as they coordinate evacuations.
Functional Area: Transit Vehicle Assignment
  1. The center shall assign individual transit vehicles to transit blocks.
  2. The center shall download vehicle assignments to the transit vehicle prior to the start of the day’s operations.
  3. The center shall provide an exception handling process for the vehicle assignment function. This process shall generate new supplemental vehicle assignments as required due to change events which occur during the operating day.
  4. The center shall provide an inventory management function for the transit facility that stores functional attributes about each vehicle owned by the transit operator. The functional attributes permit the planning and assignment functions to match vehicles with routes based on suitability for the types of service required by the particular routes.
  5. The center shall generate transit vehicle availability listings, current and forecast, to support transit vehicle assignment planning.
  6. The center shall provide transit operations personnel with the capability to update transit vehicle assignments and receive reports on transit vehicle inventory status.
Functional Area: Transit Center Signal Priority
  1. The center shall analyze transit vehicle schedule performance to determine the need for priority along certain routes or at certain intersections.
  2. The center shall send requests for priority along routes or at intersections to traffic management.
  3. The center shall define business rules that govern use of transit vehicle signal priority, communicate these rules to the transit vehicle, and monitor transit vehicle requests for priority at signalized intersections.
  4. The center shall provide transit operations personnel with the capability to control and monitor transit signal priority operations.