Boyertown, PA – (May, 2004) Clearwater Beach, Florida recently played host to the Transportation Automation Standards Association (TASA) 2004 annual conference. More than thirty intercity bus transportation professionals attended the conference to gather the latest in technology information benefiting their industry.
TASA President John Lanni of Bonanza Bus Lines and Nancy Teghtmeyer of Gateway Ticketing Systems Canada headed the first day of the conference. Events for the day included TASA business, officer elections and a treasurer’s report from Brenda Scott of Coach Canada Trentway-Wager. Gateway Ticketing also announced that the 2005 TASA conference will take place at Hersheypark June 1st through the 5th and will be hosted at the Hershey Lodge and Convention Center in Hershey, PA.
A number of informative presentations from industry experts filled the conference agenda including Will Craddock of Saskatchewan Transit Company (STC). Craddock presented an overview of STC’s operation. In his presentation, Craddock noted how STC has integrated data from their Gateway TX3280 Ticketing System into the company’s business environment via a province-wide high-speed network.
Bob Hoxie of Burlington Trailways described how his company started with one route originating in St. Louis in 1981 and developed into an operation today of 17 coaches in 48 states featuring charters, tours, and scheduled service. One division of Burlington is a full service travel agency, which offers package tours. Another provides intercity bus service in five states in the upper Midwest and operates 365 days a year.
In 1996, Burlington launched a computerization initiative with two Gateway Ticketing Systems’ schedule information workstations. This initiative has now grown to include 12 automated ticketing locations totaling 14 point-of-sale workstations. In 2003, Burlington was awarded a $250,000 grant by the Transportation Safety Administration to address onboard security initiatives and to launch a threat vulnerability analysis. Bob also demonstrated a prototype of Burlington’s ecommerce website during his presentation.
Joe Smits of Saucon Technology explained how the terrorist attacks on 9/11 have resulted in an overwhelming increase in New York City’s waterway ridership during his presentation. According to Smits, this increase has jettisoned the operation from 12 active passenger ferry vessels to 55 along with 109 buses. With that many vessels operating on the river between New York and New Jersey, location tracking and operations monitoring become a challenge. In response to this change, Smits explained an enterprise service solution that is being implemented by NY Waterway integrating Gateway Ticketing’s point-of-sale system with Saucon’s TDS GPS with “service bus” architecture. This important integration will provide real-time information to NY Waterway’s command center.
With this solution in place, NY Waterway staff can operate a virtual command center from any location simply by logging on to the Internet with a secure username and password. In doing so, staff can provide and view vessel locations, performance and situational alerts, and more. Future possibilities for the system include biometric monitoring to ensure captain/driver performance as well as Internet access to vehicle locations for passengers via web browsers and radio equipped wireless PDA’s.
Gateway Ticketing Systems’ staff presenting at the conference included Scott Trievel, Product Manager; Darryl Moser, Executive Vice President; and Michael Andre, President & CEO.
Darryl Moser presented a session entitled “Smartcards and Intercity Bus: Is now the right time?” Now is the right time, according to Darryl, if you care about intermodal relationships or if commuter transportation is part of your operation. Darryl noted that transit applications of smartcard technologies currently include the cities of Los Angeles, Atlanta, and San Francisco. Each of these cities is moving forward with partial or complete implementations of smartcard transit solutions. Regional implementations include the New York and New Jersey Port Authority.
Moser also shared the ‘buzz’ from the recent APTA (American Public Transportation Association) meeting in NYC, Gateway Ticketing’s position to participate in the RIS (Regional Interface Specification), and the intention of keeping TASA members apprised of activities relating to the RIS. According to Moser, the ultimate goal for the RIS is to unify New York City transportation onto a “one card” standard for the Metro, NY Waterway, and Path carriers.
Scott Trievel demonstrated Galaxy 2.1 for Transportation garnering compliments regarding the product’s ease of use and stylish Microsoft Windows graphical user interface. Useful suggestions from bus industry veterans intimately familiar with the complexities of intercity fares and schedule maintenance were also shared.
Additionally, Trievel demonstrated one of Gateway Ticketing’s research and development initiatives. This initiative provides the ability to print two-dimensional barcodes on a Boca Systems thermal ticket printer. 2D barcodes - as they are known - can store in excess of 1,000 characters of data within a small, speckled square imprinted on a passenger ticket or package express waybill. This feature offers the potential for an increased amount of data to be provided for lift processing upon the ticket itself.
Trievel concluded by covering the internal changes occurring over the last few years behind the scenes at Gateway Ticketing Systems. According to Trievel, significant progress has been made in the product development department and in moving the company’s software engineering and quality assurance processes to level four of the Capability Maturity Model.
Michael Andre provided the closing remarks for the annual Conference thanking the outgoing board members for their service to TASA in the prior year, the incoming members, and the attendees and vendors who invested their time to prepare and present informative talks on their respective topics.
Andre also explained Gateway’s product direction as it relates to intercity bus transportation and the degree of change in the intercity bus industry’s computer automation and electronic data interfaces. Although schedule-specific tickets were once thought to be the “new” standard for passenger ticketing, there are currently very few carriers in the industry supporting schedule-specific tickets according to Andre.
Andre concluded the meeting by thanking the conference’s organizers and stated that he was looking forward to seeing everyone in Hershey, PA at the 2005 conference.