OCEAN CITY — The Ocean City Mayor and Council approved the purchase of a tracking system to serve the dual purpose of allowing transportation supervisors to monitor municipal bus locations and give the public the ability to see where the buses are on their phones.
For the last year or more, Ocean City officials have been looking into an online application for mobile devices that will allow riders to track the locations of the municipal buses on Coastal Highway and more accurately estimate their arrival times at bus stops. The town’s transportation department has utilized similar technology since 2004 allowing supervisors to track the bus locations, determine where riders are stacking up at bus stops and moving the resources to meet demand.
When that system showed signs of failure this summer with 35 different outages totaling 96 hours including an entire three-day period in July, it expedited the need to replace the 2004 Auto Vehicle Locator (AVL) system and presented an opportunity to implement the proposed enhancement to allow the public to access the locations of the buses and their estimated arrival times at various bus stops through mobile devices at the same time.
Last week, the Mayor and Council got a cursory look at the plan to replace the bus-tracking technology utilized by transportation supervisors from a command center at the south end of the Boardwalk and began exploring the possibility of adding the public access mobile app at the same time. On Tuesday, transportation officials presented a proposal ultimately approved unanimously by the council.
Public Works Director Hal Adkins said with the repeated failures on the 14-year-old AVL system this summer, replacing it with the new state-of-the-art TransLoc, short for transportation locator, system made sense from a deployment standpoint.
“Without an effective AVL system, you’re literally flying blind,” he said. “It’s back to the old radio days in terms of locating where the buses are and how best to move them around.”
The original AVL system purchased in 2004 cost $80,000 up front and came with an $8,700 per year operation fee. The current AVL system is operational roughly from May to October with no tracking in the offseason. The TransLoc system pitched by transportation officials on Tuesday would include a one-time cost at $400 each for the installation of 66 tablets on municipal buses and annual operating costs of over $44,000, or about $36,000 over the current annual operating cost of the current AVL system, which is experiencing routine failures.
The total cost of the new AVL comes in at around $100,000, of which $80,000 is already included in the transportation department’s annual budget. The remaining $20,000 could be moved rather easily from the town’s general fund, according to Budget Manager Jenny Knapp, who said increased ridership because of the more efficient bus deployments and the mobile app accessible for potential riders would likely offset the cost of purchasing and operating the new AVL system.
Adkins explained the AVL systems on the market come with a variety of features and price tags. He pointed out when town officials were first exploring an AVL system to allow transportation supervisors to track the buses and move them in order to meet the demand, some of the potential costs were staggering at the time.
“For those of you who were around at the time, if you look back to 2002, we really struggled with this whole AVL system,” he said. “We looked at different options and by the time we were done, we were looking at a $400,000 system. The council at the time wanted just a basic back-of-the-house system and that’s where that $80,000 number came in. Now, 14 years later, we’re looking at a system that will cost around $100,000 and it’s vastly superior to the current system and we can get the bonus of adding the public access app system.”
Transportation Director Mark Rickards explained the tracking system will allow visitors and residents to access the information through their phones and other mobile devices, including updates provided through text messages.
“Nowadays in the transit industry, travelers want to know where the buses are and plan their trip,” he said. “This would enable better results with access for the public.”
Adkins explained a real world example of how the public-access AVL system could be utilized.
“If someone works in one of our establishments and rides the bus to and from work, they can put in information specific to their bus stop so they know when to leave work and head to the bus stop, especially if it’s cold or raining,” he said. “They won’t be bombarded with information about every bus, only the bus stop they utilize.”
Councilman Wayne Hartman asked if the estimated $36,000 in annual operating costs would be the same if the town purchased both the municipal and public access service. Adkins explained the cost would be the same if the town opted only for the AVL system utilized by transportation supervisors. The council voted 7-0 to approve the purchase of the new system including the app accessible to the public.
