By Stephen Evans

However insignificant they may seem on the surface, parking lot dings and maintenance yard mishaps are serious business. Too often sloughed off as a minor inconvenience, they actually manifest as a major drain on the company. Unreported parking lot collisions are like an iceberg where only a fraction of the problem is showing above the waterline.
Transit agencies and bus operators often accept minor and unreported collisions as just coming with the territory, where drivers and inexperienced technicians are maneuvering commercial vehicles in tight spaces and parking lots. Without an investigation or follow-up report, the costs of such an incident are often simply absorbed into the administrative and maintenances ledgers.

What the operator sees on the surface are only the most direct costs of an accident. They can be substantial when
they include towing, adjusters, clean-up, repairs to damaged vehicles and property, as well as associated medical costs and legal fees.
Meanwhile, all the indirect costs are lurking below the surface. They result from investigations, equipment downtime, increased insurance premiums, a loss of production, not to mention additional administrative time spent on phone calls and extra paperwork that comes with filling out accident reports.
Above the waterline are the insured costs; below are the often greater uninsured costs of damage to property and miscellaneous expenses. The costs above and below the waterline add up to the real cost of an accident, which can be measured and controlled.
Quite often operators do not take action in such accidents, or they wait to make repairs because the damage does not warrant taking the vehicle out of service. But that is to ignore the threat. These small but significant accidents take place every day, particularly in larger companies.
Unreported parking lot accidents should be managed with as much focus and resources as a company would use with higher profile crashes. One large bus transportation company started capturing parking lot damages and quickly realized it had experienced no less than 164 incidents in the first six months at an estimated cost of $267,727, or $1,600 per unreported incident.
Projecting that rate of accidents over a full year—328 unreported collisions—with $535,454 estimated damages managed at 10 percent margin, produces these scenarios:
Scenario I: just the tip; no hidden costs under water —With an estimated $535,454 needed to cover costs “above the waterline,” the operator would require $5,354,540 in revenue.
Scenario II: for every $1 showing $1 is hidden — One-to one direct vs. indirect costs would require $10,709,080 in revenue to cover damages.
Scenario III: for every $1 showing $3 is hidden — One to three direct vs. indirect costs would require $21,418,816 in revenue to cover damages.
In this particular company, everyone knew from training what their role and duties would be when a major collision occurred, but with these smaller, and slyly expensive minor accidents, no one knew what to do, or if they needed to do anything. Armed with this more focused view of minor accidents, the company reviewed its policies and procedures and instituted several changes. Today:
The company frequently monitors video surveillance and drives cams.
Dispatch issues and checks pre- and post-trip damage cards. A driver with too many points could be suspended.
Daily walk-around inspections have been improved with inspectors being more careful to note new damage on damage cards.
Drivers and technicians receive more training and orientation to drive slower and more carefully, to avoid backing up as much as possible, and to use back-up cameras where possible.
Drivers rely on spotters in tight spaces and never ask for or accept assistance from a customer or passenger on the bus.
Where possible, the company established one-way drive routes and reversing policies that require alerting dispatch before backing up alone.
One last piece of advice to help reduce the cost of parking lot dings is to ensure the recognition of this problem and the policies to police it match with the core values of the company and its employees. Everyone must be accountable. Employees cannot cover one another for an accident or mishap they would normally consider minor and not worth mentioning, particularly when they know integrity is a stated core value of the company. BRM
__________________________
Stephen Evans serves as Vice President of Safety, for Pacific Western Group of Companies, Calagary, AB, Canada, and as Secretary, Bus Industry Safety Council (BISC).

By Glenn Swain

“For northern Californians, Tahoe is the place to ski,” Brian McCooey says.

While warm weather lovers may see snow is an unnecessary freezing of water, to motorcoach operators who book winter ski tours it represents an avalanche of positive income. Along with leaf peeper tours, one- and two-day ski trips remain popular as ever — if Mother Nature cooperates.

For 16 years San Francisco-based Bay Area Ski Bus has chartered one-day ski tours to Lake Tahoe. Founder and CEO Brian McCooey says for northern Californians, Tahoe is the place to ski.

McCooey started with two buses his first year; last year he chartered a total of 320, 56-passenger Prevost, MCI and Van Hool motorcoaches to haul ski enthusiasts to the largest alpine lake in the U.S. Nearly all of Ski Bus’ tours are to Lake Tahoe. For about $100 a person, Ski Bus provides transportation, a lift ticket, a continental breakfast and afternoon refreshments.

McCooey and Ski Bus made the best of Lake Tahoe’s record-breaking 800 inches of snow last season. Even in July. McCooey says when a number of Tahoe resorts opened for the July 4th weekend, he sent a busload up two days before.

“Tours this year have been fantastic,” McCooey says. “It just keeps increasing. This past season we were up about 5 percent from the year before. As far as the economy, we have a nice little niche. People can still afford the one-day ski trip, but maybe not a weeklong or weekend trip.”

Fashionable snowboarders take advantage of generous snow near Lake Tahoe during a Bay Area Ski Bus tour.

For his tours McCooey uses a number of Lake Tahoe resorts, including Alpine Meadows, Kirkwood Mountain, Sierra at Tahoe, Sugar Bowl, Northstar and Squaw Valley.

Stephen Miller, owner of Warwick, RI-based New England Action Sports, says his ski tour business grows every year. Miller began booking ski tours in the Northeast in 1971. Although based in Rhode Island, Miller’s company books day, weekend and weeklong tours out of Boston, New York, Connecticut, and directly out of numerous ski shops. Miller also schedules bus ski trips in Austria.

“I think the first year we were in business we chartered 27 buses,” Miller says. “Now we charter 500 to 600 a year. We have about 30,000 people a year go on ski tours.”

Miller’s company buses skiers to all the major resorts in the Northeast.

“We sell them a bus ride and a lift ticket for less than the price of the lift ticket,” he says. “The lift ticket for a resort in Stowe, Vermont is around $90. We sell the transportation and lift ticket for $73.95. Stowe is my favorite because it’s the best skiing around here.”

One problem Miller has run into is working with union drivers with seniority in Colorado. In the past Miller used Greyhound. According to Miller, union agreements allow drivers with seniority to bounce local drivers, no matter where the senior driver lives.

“You may get a driver from Florida or places that never see snow, and they’re driving up these mountain passes in snow,” Miller says. “It can be scary for passengers.”

While many companies are thriving, some are not. Tammy DuChene, a spokesperson for Downhill Riders Ski and Travel Co. in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, says tours were down last season. Blame it on the sluggish Canadian economy.

“The cause of the decrease was due to the economy not fully recovered,” DuChene says. “Groups planned only one event throughout the winter rather than several. But in 2012 we project we our tours should return to what they were two years ago.”

While ski tour trips can be easy for travel professionals, there are pitfalls. McCooey says the key to success is always using a dependable bus charter company that uses competent drivers and safe equipment. McCooey prefers to use the same companies so he can request specific drivers.

People aboard a New England Action Sports charter are all smiles.

One-day loop trips in the U.S. are easy, but overseas ski tours are not for the timid. Miller began planning ski trips to Innsbruck, Austria about 15 years ago. At first he made his share of mistakes because of more complicated logistics.

“If you’re setting up a trip to Europe it’s a little more difficult,” he says. “You’re a day off at all times, and that can be very tricky to plan perfectly. It can get complicated.”

McCooey says that not only are ski tours popular, they are even good for the environment.

“It takes maybe 30 or 40 cars off the road,” he says. “And it’s probably the safest and most economical way to travel.”

Eron Shosteck serves as president & CEO of The Media Consultant Group, Alexandria, VA, a marketing and communications firm specializing in transportation.

With its order for 84 40-foot CNG-powered MCI Commuter Coaches, Motor Coach Industries (MCI), Schaumburg, IL, is now an ally of the City of Los Angeles, CA in its continuing effort to improve air quality. LADOT signed a contract for the clean-air, wheelchair-lift equipped commuter coaches with the Cummins ISL G 8.9 liter, 320hp engine that meets 2010 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and California’s California Air Resource Board (CARB) standards.
MCI says the CNG coaches will be the first MCI models in the LADOT fleet, and the order includes an option for 11 additional coaches after deliveries begin in the third quarter.
LADOT is using Federal Transit Administration grants for 70 percent of the funding to replace a majority of the 94 older, heavy-duty Commuter Express diesel buses, which are among the department’s oldest equipment on the road. The total value of the 84 MCI bus order is $59,220,000.
The 49-seat LADOT coaches will run on the Los Angeles Commuter Express system that connects outlying suburban districts with Downtown and other employment centers that include Century City, Westwood, LAX, El Segundo, Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank and Encino.
LADOT launched its Commuter Express program in 1985, beginning with a single route carrying passengers between a city-leased park and ride lot in Encino and downtown Los Angeles. Today, the service has 13 routes operating throughout Los Angeles County during the weekday morning and afternoon peak commuting hours.

“A bus operator could easily become the face of the industry if something bad should happen,” writes Media Consultant Group President & CEO Eron Shosteck in the introduction of the company’s new 20-page step-by-step guide, Crisis Management In A Box. “An operator must know to use the attention as a chance to show how much the company is doing for safety, as opposed to letting those who know so little about buses and coaches set the tone in distorted terms.”

Responsible bus operators frustrated and concerned about the long-term effects the recent spate of illegal motorcoach mercenary crashes could have on their companies now have available to them a special toolkit created to help them prepare for, navigate, and ultimately emerge triumphant from the situation with the new Crisis Management In A Box toolkit has the right tool at the right time to empower operators with the strategies they need. Tactics include how to approach direct crises vs. indirect crises; how and when to engage the media; a 100-question checklist operators should have the answers for within reach at all times; how to turn ambushes into opportunities to showcase your company’s operations; and tips to help operators combat bus safety distortions to protect their companies’ reputations and reassure their customers.

“The current crisis regarding the perception of bus safety is so widespread and overheated that every operator is likely to be affected if they do not take some kind of corrective action,” says Shosteck. “There is no performance metric to measure the possible effects that the erosion of consumer confidence in bus travel could ultimately have. Left unaddressed, however, it could damage the bottom line of bus operators throughout North America irreparably.”

Shosteck authored the step-by-step crisis management guide in response to calls he received from operators requesting it. It also includes information for companies on the importance of building media relationships to establish clear lines of communication.

The Media Consultant Group is also offering on-site media training, crisis mitigation exercises and mock press drills in response to operator requests. For more information, visit www.mediaconsultantgroup.com/products. BR

By Gerald Rawling

Schools out! Graduates of a Valetta academy hire a bus — the older the better seems to be the rule — for a rowdy “right-of-passage” celebration. Photo by Gerald Rawling

Before my recent visit to the small Mediterranean island of Malta, my colleagues advised me in advance to pay close attention to the iconic Maltese buses. Although they are being phased out of the public transportation system, they will certainly not be forgotten. Bus enthusiasts on a shopping spree in Valletta, the capital city and a UNESCO Heritage site itself, will be the first to spot the recurring motif of the bygone bus on postcards, key chains, refrigerator magnets and mouse pads, just to name a few of the souvenirs.

The Maltese buses, usually painted in some gaudy combination of yellow-orange and red, or grey-blue and red on the smaller island of Gozo, have been the public transport on Malta since 1931, two years after the last run of the Malta Railways streetcars.

The last of the Malta long noses in regular service — a Ford Thames from Dagenham. Photo source: Wikemedia Commons, author Taueres — a Ford Thames from Dagenham. Photo source: Wikemedia Commons, author Taueres

During post-World War II, these workhorses first were “long noses” built on British or Canadian truck chassis with manual gearboxes, and frequently “tricked out” by the driver-owner and a supporting garage. A parade of some of the chassis were literally left behind or gifted by the Allies military units.

Only one long nose remains in regular service. In the 1960s and 1980s came a motley collection of British buses, some ex-town and country, some ex-holiday coaches.

In recent years some imports to the system have been Volvos, Turkish BMCs, and a number of King Longs from China. Maltese garages and body shops are very inventive, having gone the length to rework the front of a long nose into a seriously “flat-nosed” bus that emulates the newer vehicles.

Now, for these time-warp icons their number is up, ostensibly because they collectively breach many of the arcane EU rules for operating public transport vehicles, such as drivers’ hours at the wheel, lack of accessibility, and particularly emission standards.

Riding the tortuous and switchback Route 4 around Valletta harbor to climb over Cospicua into Kalkara proves there is some truth to the latter indictment; grinding gears and laboring engines suggest some noise standards are being violated at the same time. The public authority, Malta Transport, put the whole network up for grabs. As of July 3, the operator will be global powerhouse Arriva, now owned by Deutsche Bahn.

“Standard issue” city or county transit buses; also secondhand from Britain, and probably ex-London Transport Leyland Lynxes, on routes to Hamrun, Birkirkara, Rabat. Here they squeeze past on the main commercial and retail street through Hamrun.

The prevailing bus color will be Arriva teal. Could it perhaps include a flash of yellow-red and orange to at least acknowledge the icons they displaced?

The Malta bus system of today is a mixture of makes and models from many countries. The fleet numbers about 510 units with more than 400 licensed operators, and a network of body shops and garages to keep the buses running. It is not unusual for an operator to alternate between a 16-hour day and a day off.

A management team elevated from the ranks hands out written route assignments bi-weekly and watches over them daily. The public authority, Transport Malta, conducts general oversight to see that the team fulfills all its assignments.

If the callers on open mike radio in Malta are representative, then the population is not in favor of the change over. Arriva says it will restructure the route system, using only half the number of buses for the same overall service level, but more drivers will be needed if they intend to conform to service hours regulations and continue with limited night service. The plan is to discontinue its current national subsidy in excess of three million Euros and introduce a universal national-level fare.

This is the essential Malta postcard — the all-day, every day bus rodeo that is the terminus for the large number of routes radiating from the capital Valetta. The bus on a truck chassis is circa 1950, body by Brincat, a Maltese coachbuilder, and customized by the owner.

For now, while some buses are being repainted or being traded in there is a steady, stream of truly international bus aficionados principally from Britain pouring onto Malta with spotters’ books and web downloads in hand to get that last video or photo. BR

Bus enthusiast Gerald Rawling, a retired metropolitan transportation planner, is the former director of operations analysis for the Chicago area transportation system.

By Glenn Swain

Touring cars sit in front of the State Game Lodge in Custer State Park in South Dakota in this 1920s-era photo. The State Game Lodge was also the “Summer White House” for Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Calvin Coolidge.

Restoring a vintage 1920s tour bus has become a labor of love for Herman Jones, owner of Mount Rushmore Tours in Rapid City, South Dakota. Jones first had the idea to restore an old bus back in 1970. Through the years Jones had refurbished a 1932 Ford five-window vehicle with a rumble seat that had been given to him in the 1960s, but he really wanted to restore a bus. He had seen a number of photos of original 1920s rag-top, 15-seat passenger tour buses that hauled passengers in the nearby Black Hills region.

The vehicles had been owned by the Black Hills and Western Tour Company.

“I decided I wanted to find one of these tour buses, so I started looking,” Jones says. “I found one in Minnesota and they wanted $56,000 for it. I didn’t have that kind of money then. Besides, if I did I would have bought a big bus and made some money with it.”

In 2005 he finally located one in Harmony, PA. The price was right at $6,000 and he bought it sight unseen over the phone.

“It was obviously a basket case,” Jones says of the condition of the bus. “A father and son got started working on it and got the motor finished, but eventually they had it more torn apart than together.”

While Jones had visions of using the bus for specialized commercial uses, his insurance man suggested he be very careful in putting too much money into the restoration. Vintage vehicles can sometimes be nearly uninsurable.

Herman Jones’ vintage 1920s touring bus looks like a junkyard heap now, but plans are to restore it to working order.

“There’s no reason to have one of these if you can’t use them,” Jones says. “My approach is to try to get it up to DOT standards. We’ll be able to use it for specialty events like weddings, anniversaries and parties. It’ll be more of a fair-weather rig than an all-weather vehicle.”

The cost to get the old bus back on the road is not cheap.

“We’ll easily dump $80 to $100,000 into it,” Jones admits. “That’s to make it look like is just rolled off the showroom floor. I’m one of those guys who says if we’re going to do it let’s do it right. Let’s not poor boy it where you have to fix or repair the thing constantly for the next ten years.”

Jones did confirm the bus was used in the Black Hills in the 1920s. He found a physician in Loma Linda, CA whose hobby is, oddly, keeping track of serial numbers of antique tour buses.

Jones is currently working with a guy in Illinois to buy and ship a new chassis for the tour bus so it can meet specifications. When found, it will be a simple matter of transferring the body onto the new chassis.

Jones predicts the finished project is maybe a year away.

“It’s a labor of love. It’s not something that we’re doing to make lots of money off of. It’s something to give somebody that nostalgic appeal that wasn’t expected. We try to give people what we promised them, and more.” BR

Survey participants revealed a large number of service attributes that affect user perceptions of different transit modes. These findings show that people do perceive alternative rapid transit modes differently, and appear to be independent of any particular mode or technology. Photo courtesy of LA METRO Transit Authority.

Without a doubt, image is important to Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). Sleek looking vehicles, rail-like stations, advanced technologies and a strong brand identity are just a few of the features that help communicate the message: This is not just a regular bus service. With BRT specifically designed to emulate the high quality service of rail-based transit, there is still much the industry must know about its capability to replicate the premium image of rail and how and why it attracts ridership.

NBRTI recently completed a study to examine the tangible and intangible factors that influence public perceptions of different transit modes.

Tangible service attributes – like travel cost, travel time, and service frequency – are concrete and pretty straightforward to measure, while intangible attributes, such as comfort, ride quality, and safety, are a bit fuzzier. They’re based more on opinion and, as such, are more difficult to measure and quantify.

We designed the NBRTI study around two market research exercises; first a series of focus groups followed by an attitudinal survey. We fielded the research in Los Angeles, CA due to the city’s range of different rapid transit modes, including BRT-Lite (Metro Rapid), Full-Service BRT (Orange Line), light rail (Gold Line, Blue Line) and heavy rail (Red Line).

Focus Groups
The focus groups revealed a large number of service attributes that affect user perceptions of different transit modes. Survey participants rated each transit mode from “very poor” to “very good,” both overall and according to the 14 core service attributes. We used the overall rating for each transit mode as a proxy for ridership attraction. These findings show that people do perceive alternative rapid transit modes differently. Furthermore, differences in perception appear to be independent of any particular mode or technology.

The survey data revealed significant differences in the overall ratings of the different modes, which we grouped accordingly into four statistically distinct tiers. Overall, ratings generally followed the relative level of investment required to provide each service.

To dig a little deeper we examined the actual level of investment of each mode, defined as capital cost per mile in 2005 dollars. The figure below compares each mode in terms of overall rating and actual level of investment, and also shows the four tiers.

This analysis showed a large disparity in investment level. Yet, aside from the two obvious extremes of the local bus and the Red Line, the ratings achieved by the remaining transit services didn’t simply follow respective levels of investment. For Tiers 2 and 3, both the Metro Rapid “BRT-Lite” and Orange Line “Full-Service” BRT outperform their investment costs, achieving a slightly higher rating than their more expensive light rail counterparts. Overall, these findings show that, in the perception of the public, BRT (even in its lower-investment forms) can compete with rail-based transit in return for lower capital cost investments.

We then took a look at the influence of the different tangible and intangible attributes on the overall ratings of each mode. It appears that modal perceptions are determined by a combination of tangible and intangible attributes, with reliability being the most important tangible factor and safety the most important intangible factor. Interestingly, ratings for the local bus were found to be more heavily influenced by the tangible attributes of travel time, service span and service frequency, while the rail modes were more heavily influenced by the intangibles of safety and comfort. Focus group transcripts suggest that urban context influences the attractiveness of a transit service by directly impacting perceptions of intangible service attributes such as safety. That urban context may in fact have a larger impact on overall perceptions than whether a service is rail- or bus-based.

Overall, findings show that Full-Service BRT can replicate both the functionality standards and image qualities normally associated with rail, and that even a lower-investment BRT-Lite service performs remarkably well in terms of overall rating achieved per investment dollar. Visit www.nbrti.org for the full report.

Jennifer Flynn serves as a Senior Research Associate for the National Bus Rapid Transit Institute, Center for Urban Transportation Research of the University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.

By William “Gator” Pryne
MCI Senior Technical Advisor

Pryne inspects the A/C system during an MCI Technical Tune Up Session at the MCI Training Center in Louisville earlier this year. Photo courtesy of MCI

Summer is fast approaching, that time of year when a great number of bus and coach operators throughout the country must deal with air conditioning (HVAC) systems working their hardest. This is the time to give the A/C all the attention it needs to ensure reliable, optimum performance on the hottest days. Do not wait until it is too late and costly. Preventative maintenance is the key.

MCI offers these steps ensure passengers and the driver remain cool and comfortable during the trip.

The PM process should include checks of the A/C compressor drive belt, compressor oil level and the system refrigerant level as part of each and every HVAC system inspection.

Leave the engine turned off to check the tension and the condition of the A/C compressor belt without the engine running, as well as the condition of the crankshaft pulley and clutch pulley.

The belt must ride high on the pulleys for best performance. Refer to the maintenance manual and the drive belt manufacturer specifications and guidelines for information on when and under what conditions to replace the belt.

While the engine and HVAC system is running, listen for abnormal noises from the compressor and the condenser and evaporator motors. Check the compressor oil level and the refrigerant level only after the HVAC system has operated for at least 20 minutes. Conduct weekly checks of the condenser and evaporator coils and evaporator filters for cleanliness to ensure A/C efficiency.

Do not allow road debris such as scrap paper and plastic to block the condenser core. Check and clean the interior ventilation system on a regular basis.

Inspect the area around the compressor crankshaft seal and the system refrigerant hoses regularly for oil residue, which may indicate a leak. If a leak is detected, the maintenance manual explains the steps to make the repair.

Check the refrigerant filter regularly for a temperature differential of more than 5 degrees across the filter inlet and outlet connections, indicating the filter drier is becoming restricted and needs replacing.

Inspect the evaporator and condenser motor bearings and brushes monthly, along with the A/C compressor mounting hardware and the HVAC component electrical harnesses. Look for discolored terminals and connectors that may indicate a loose or failing connection. Use a mechanics stethoscope or a similar ultrasonic listening device to detect bearing failures before the problem. BR

By David Hubbard

Destination Shuttle Services (DSS), Los Angeles, CA, serves 13 hotels within 1.5 miles of LAX and operates 34 shuttle buses equipped with advanced GPS and Omnivex software.

The proposal Destination Shuttle Services (DSS), Los Angeles, CA, first presented in 2000 was strong enough to convince 13 competing hotels within a 1-1/2-mile radius of Los Angeles International Airport to buy into its idea for a singular consolidated and fully integrated shuttle bus service.

Five percent of all passengers traveling by air utilize hotel shuttle services for convenient transport to and from the serving airports. Based on the economic report prepared for 2008 by the Air Transport Association, 769.2 million travelers flew nationwide, meaning that more than 38,460,000 people used hotel shuttle bus service. LAX represents only 6.8 percent of the total number of people who rely on this service.

Conservative calculations based on the figures above indicate throughout the country more than 12,450,000 shuttle bus trips operate the old fashion way, initiated independently from each hotel with separate fleets. DSS suggests this number could be cut in half through creative management and programs like the one it has designed for the Los Angeles International Airport.

Purporting to be the first private green transit system in Los Angeles, DSS says its mission extends beyond basic transportation to encompass environment stewardship and greater community support.

Launched in 2000 after successfully creating and delivering the transportation plan for the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, DSS is the brainchild of Events and Transportation Associates, which formed in 1991 to serve highly secured and visible events. Its client list also includes the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, GA.

The communication system mounted in plain view on each vehicle provides passengers with location specific and dynamic information for onboard bus passengers arriving or departing.

The company formed DSS in response to a call from the City of Los Angeles for a trip reduction solution to and from LAX that would reduce congestion and emissions. This initial phase consolidated airport shuttle services for nine hotel properties and slashed more than 146,000 vehicle trips in the first year. DSS says service has since grown to 13 properties with 34 buses operating at a higher volume with greater efficiently than the prior combined 65 vehicles of various models and fuel types that each hotel operated independently from one another.

DSS took three specific steps early on that can significantly reduce emissions levels. It changed fuel systems, upgraded and updated the equipment and created a much more efficient business model. It also converted all the vehicles in the fleet from gasoline and diesel engines to a mix of CNG and propane powered buses.

These upgrades took the average bus model year of 1999 to 2007. Today the DSS reports its fleet transporting 2.2 million passengers yearly while trimming one million total miles of vehicle traffic in and around LAX. DSS says this move cut the number of bus trips by approximately 195,000, used 227,500 less gallons of fuel, and eliminated over four million pounds of CO2 emissions per year.

Technology improves service
LCD screens mounted inside the shuttles provide passengers with location specific and dynamic information for onboard bus passengers arriving or departing. GPS displays on public information kiosks at bus stops and load zones give the location of the bus in real time, and feature transit-style vehicle signage and audio announcement systems. The DDS software manages every vehicle each minute of every day.

In addition, kiosks placed in the lobbies of each of the partner hotels provide guests with information, including the arrival of the next shuttle along with the status of their flight — all made available through the use of Omnivex digital signage software and Microsoft Windows 7 location-based services.

The system essentially makes the shuttle service an extension of the hospitality experience guests expect from their hotel. Through the sale of advertising space within the digital content on the screens, Destination Shuttle Services says it has realized a new revenue stream and a tremendous return on investment.

Passengers better understood
DSS developed its proprietary trip reduction model to determine the highs and lows of passenger transportation needs throughout the day. The software alerts dispatch when to send more or less buses, which streamlines costs and reduces road congestion and emissions.

“Once we know the number of travelers at a hotel, and how many people we will move in a day, we can arrange for the best size bus and the ideal number of runs,” says Chief Executive Officer Jack E. Lott. “The goal is always to minimize the number of trips. We are utilizing our equipment more efficiently throughout the entire week.”

The technology enables DSS to track guest and passenger trends by the hour, day, week, month and year for each hotel, as well as determine specific demographics. For example, one hotel may cater predominately to international guests; another attracts regional business travelers; while another may serve only the family and leisure market.

The communication system mounted in plain view on each vehicle provides passengers with location specific and dynamic information for onboard bus passengers arriving or departing.

The information serves more efficiently scheduling and pairing passengers loads to traffic conditions, even though the furthest hotel DSS serves is only 1.5 miles from LAX.

GPS has improved to the point the driver has can now reset the system with a hit of a button to see the locations of buses on the other routes. Drivers are spending much less time on the radio, and it is safe and more efficient to make changes in a schedule or route.

“The 1.5 million miles per year DSS buses travel derive from round trips of no more than three miles,” says Lott. “Over a year the short distances add up. We still take out over six million pounds of CO2 and reduce the number of hotel trips by 55 percent.”

DSS concedes its system is very complex and has taken a long time to implement, but the company has eliminated deadhead miles.BR