Chicago implements new bus management technology

Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is implementing a new technology designed to reduce delays and provide a more consistent and reliable bus service. The Bus Transit Management System (BTMS) provides real-time monitoring of bus movements and real-time communications between bus drivers and CTA’s control centre. The system will allow buses to more quickly adapt to changing traffic and street conditions, and help avoid the two biggest challenges facing bus service: bus “bunching” and long waits between buses.
May 13, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
1000 Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is implementing a new technology designed to reduce delays and provide a more consistent and reliable bus service.

The Bus Transit Management System (BTMS) provides real-time monitoring of bus movements and real-time communications between bus drivers and CTA’s control centre. The system will allow buses to more quickly adapt to changing traffic and street conditions, and help avoid the two biggest challenges facing bus service: bus “bunching” and long waits between buses.

Touch-screen terminals on every CTA bus provide improved two-way communication between drivers and CTA’s Communication and Power Control (C/PC), the command centre that monitors all bus and train operations throughout the service region.

The system enables the control centre to better track the location and movement of buses, and quickly convey route or speed changes to operators in order to ensure proper spreading of buses and adherence to schedule when possible. If control centre personnel detect conditions that could lead to a service delay or bus bunching—more than one bus arriving at a stop at or near the same time—they can instruct the driver to adjust the route accordingly.

The control centre can also relay messages to multiple buses about instantaneously.

By later this summer, all of CTA’s approximately 1,800 buses will be equipped with BTMS.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Intersection management, cooperative infrastructures - what next?
    February 1, 2012
    What do recent vehicle recalls mean for future cooperative infrastructures? Anthony Smith takes a look. As ITS industry stakeholders converge on Amsterdam for the 2010 Cooperative Mobility Showcase, an unprecedentedly wide range of technologies will be on display demonstrating what might be achievable in the future from innovations based on Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications.
    Read More
  • The importance of going with the flow
    April 6, 2018
    Ensuring worker safety and up-to-date driver information is crucial to ensure that roadworks are not a source of danger and delay. Andrew Williams looks at a scheme on the A14 in Cambridgeshire, UK. In recent years, portable workzone ITS solutions have emerged as important tools in the management of major roadworks and system upgrade projects - and are viewed as an increasingly vital means of ensuring any ongoing traffic flow disruption is kept to a minimum. The technology forms a central component of an
    Read More
  • Lyt prioritises a lot of signals in Salem
    May 17, 2023
    Company will deploy its TSP system at 22 signalised intersections in Oregon city
    Read More
  • Keeping a watching brief over traffic flows
    March 11, 2015
    Monitoring traffic flows is set to become an even bigger challengebut a revolution in camera technology can help, as Patrik Anderson explains. By 2025 almost 60% of the world’s population will live in urban areas and in those cities there will be an estimated 6.2 billion private motorised trips every day. In order to manage this level of traffic growth, traffic management centres (TMCs) will need to both increase their monitoring capabilities and be able to detect traffic problems quickly, efficiently and r
    Read More

Highlighted Content