Cubic to expand University of Maryland NextBus system

Cubic Transportation Systems has been awarded a US$1.1 million, five-year contract extension from the University of Maryland (UMD) to upgrade its bus fleet management system, which currently features approximately 80 buses. They all have NextBus hardware capabilities, including GPS-based trackers, driver control units and automatic vehicle location to inform passengers of the place and time of bus arrivals. Under the contract extension, Cubic will enhance UMD’s smart bus offering by providing features su
February 2, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
378 Cubic Transportation Systems has been awarded a US$1.1 million, five-year contract extension from the University of Maryland (UMD) to upgrade its bus fleet management system, which currently features approximately 80 buses. They all have NextBus hardware capabilities, including GPS-based trackers, driver control units and automatic vehicle location to inform passengers of the place and time of bus arrivals.

Under the contract extension, Cubic will enhance UMD’s smart bus offering by providing features such as automatic passenger counting, automatic voice announcement and turn-by-turn directions. The new technology will allow UMD’s transit staff to track passenger use in real time, through the use of automatic passenger counters, which enables the customer to gather data crucial for optimising operations and improving services.

NextBus’ automatic voice announcement system will use the vehicle’s public address system and onboard light-emitting diodes signs to announce upcoming stops, transfer points and custom messages from UMD’s transit staff. The turn-by-turn direction feature will act as the transit operators’ personal guide to help navigate UMD’s multiple shuttle routes and assist in the training process of new and prospective bus operators. The installation of this new system is expected to begin in February 2017.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Communications for cooperative infrastructures and safety
    February 2, 2012
    Scott Andrews of Cogenia Partners, LLC details the findings of the VII Proof Of Concept work carried out to verify the effectiveness of 5.9GHz-based communication for future US cooperative infrastructures
    Read More
  • Keeping people on track is RATP’s raison d’etre
    June 14, 2018
    In Paris, RATP Group’s autonomous Metro Line 1 is carrying 750,000 people a day across the city. Ben Spencer is invited into the control room to take a look at how the system works Paris is visited by millions of tourists each year, keen to see for themselves stunning attractions such as the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre-Dame, the Louvre, the Seine and all the rest. But while the best-known sites of the City of Light tend to be on the surface, there is a lot going on below those iconic grand boule
    Read More
  • Digiwest announces BlueMAC 2.0 with enhanced analytics, plus new Florida DOT deployments
    June 1, 2015
    Digiwest announced the upcoming launch of BlueMAC site services 2.0. BlueMAC allows state agencies, counties and cities to collect real-time data. The new version of the BlueMAC data collection system offers enhanced analytics, delivering a range of capabilities from basic travel time and origin-destination reporting to complex tasks such as multiple turn movement delay. The new version is expected to be available in August 2015.
    Read More
  • Over-the-air software updates to benefit for automotive market, IHS says
    September 8, 2015
    While quite common in smartphones and personal computers, remote over-the-air (OTA) software updates are still only in their infancy in the automotive space, according to a new report from IHS Automotive. The report finds that OTA software updates will eventually be a big benefit for the automotive industry due to their capacity to reduce warranty costs, potentially increase overall completion rates for software-related recalls, improve customer satisfaction by eliminating trips to the dealership for so
    Read More

Highlighted Content