The Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) of Washoe County in Nevada operates nearly around the clock across Reno, Sparks and surrounding areas, and the agency depends heavily on road supervisors to respond quickly to service disruptions, traffic congestion, weather events and electric vehicle charging demands. To strengthen those frontline operations, RTC implemented Vontas OnRoute FieldOps, a mobile platform designed to provide supervisors with live operational visibility and communication tools directly from smartphones and tablets. The deployment has allowed field staff to make faster decisions, improve coordination with dispatch and maintain service continuity during emergencies and rapidly changing conditions. RTC’s operating environment presents unique challenges. Washoe County’s semi-arid climate can produce sudden weather shifts and flash flooding that disrupt routes with little warning. At the same time, supervisors often work with lean staffing levels, particularly during overnight service periods, requiring them to independently manage incidents and operational adjustments in real time. According to the Vontas case study, road supervisors are responsible for a wide range of duties that include vehicle oversight, driver coordination, emergency response and service management. As RTC continues integrating electric vehicles into its fleet, supervisors also manage charging cycles and vehicle swaps to keep buses available for service. Before implementing FieldOps, accessing operational data in the field often required bulkier hardware and more reliance on dispatch communication. Vontas developed FieldOps as a lightweight, web-based extension of its OnRoute platform, allowing supervisors to monitor operations and communicate remotely from mobile devices. The system provides several core capabilities designed for field personnel, including live vehicle tracking, real-time service monitoring, dispatch communication and EV charge management. Supervisors can view route impacts as they happen, identify delayed vehicles and coordinate service adjustments directly from the field. Vontas said the platform was designed to reduce dependence on manual coordination and radio traffic while improving response times during service disruptions. The system also digitizes processes such as detour creation and incident reporting, helping agencies streamline field operations and reduce administrative burden. For RTC road supervisor Derek Goodwin, mobility and immediate access to information were among the biggest advantages. In the case study, Goodwin noted that the application was easy to learn and practical because it operated directly from a mobile phone already carried in the field. The operational benefits became particularly clear during flash flood events in Washoe County. Using FieldOps, RTC supervisors gained real-time visibility into affected routes and vehicle locations, allowing them to quickly reroute operators, monitor service impacts and communicate changes as conditions evolved. Goodwin said the system’s live information helps supervisors “locate and intercept operators with little notice.” That ability to react quickly is critical in an environment where traffic conditions, road closures and weather can shift rapidly. By giving field staff direct access to operational intelligence, RTC reduced delays and improved coordination between supervisors, drivers and dispatch personnel. The platform also plays an important role in RTC’s growing electric vehicle operations. Managing battery-electric buses introduces additional logistical complexity, particularly when agencies must balance charging infrastructure availability with daily service requirements. FieldOps allows RTC supervisors to monitor charge levels in real time, plan vehicle swaps and identify charging opportunities before buses become unavailable for service. Goodwin said the technology helps the agency maximize the value of its existing charging infrastructure while staying ahead of required vehicle rotations. The deployment of FieldOps is part of RTC’s broader technology modernization efforts with Vontas. In recent years, the agency migrated its OnRoute CAD/AVL platform to the Vontas Cloud, adding cloud-based operational management and real-time passenger information capabilities. That transition reduced reliance on on-premises infrastructure while improving system scalability and remote accessibility for operational staff. Vontas said integrating FieldOps into the larger OnRoute ecosystem allows agencies to extend real-time operational awareness beyond dispatch centers and directly into the field. Supervisors can access live mapping, service data and communication tools wherever incidents occur, enabling faster independent decision-making. For RTC, the result has been improved operational visibility, faster response times and greater flexibility for frontline supervisors tasked with keeping service moving under demanding conditions.

Since taking new ownership in 2019 with nine drivers, one office employee, and one mechanic, Michigan-based charter and tour company, National Trails, has seen tremendous growth. In the last three years alone, the company has more than tripled the number of employees, doubled its school bus fleet and increased its motorcoach fleet size by 15. “During this period of rapid growth, we have been incredibly reliant on our software,” said Austin Arksey, owner of National Trails. “If we didn’t have software like busHive, we would not have been able to scale as easily and as efficiently as we have.” According to Arksey, when he purchased National Trails in 2019, charters were managed via handwritten or typewritten messages being physically handed to drivers. One of the first initiatives the company undertook was digitizing these many processes, and that meant migrating the manual charter-booking into busHive. busHive provides cloud-based software to streamline workflows and recordkeeping across the entire charter process – from the initial quote to confirmations, contracts, generating driver itineraries, billing, and invoicing. National Trails uses the software to manage its sales, billing, and payroll – with reporting that shows revenue per vehicle, profit/loss analysis, and other important benchmarking tools. “As we are continuing to add additional fleet, busHive has been very instrumental in giving us the keys to have visibility to being able to see our trips on a daily, weekly, monthly, even annual basis as well,” Arksey said. “It has been very helpful to have solid software in place as we continue to grow.” However, rapid scalability often comes with its own set of challenges as National Trails well knows. With the accelerated addition of employees, Arksey said that ensuring new hires are fully trained and brought up to speed on how the company functions and operates has been one of the biggest challenges thus far. “As we’ve been hiring people, some of the things that we look at are people’s adaptability, are they quick learners, especially when it comes to working with software and technology,” Arksey said. “We are not looking at people that can solve and handle the challenges that we have just today, that can help us solve the challenges we have tomorrow and beyond.” Arksey said that busHive has been instrumental in helping National Trails keep track of driver credentials and expiring licenses. The driver management tool has also enabled the company to maintain certifications without having any lapse in downtime for drivers. With the influx of new coaches and new business, preventive maintenance (PM) is always a primary concern. With more buses in the fleet, National Trails has continued to prioritize preventative maintenance on all its equipment. All work orders are loaded into busHive, allowing the company to ensure that PM orders process correctly and that inventory is properly maintained. “With the busHive software, we transitioned our techs from doing work orders on paper to doing them on tablets so we could reduce the amount of time that it took for those work orders to get into our system and have quicker visibility to be able to make decisions on equipment,” Arksey said. “Our downtime was reduced, and we were able to better manage, monitor and maintain our preventative maintenance schedules.” Arksey said he and his team feel extremely comfortable utilizing the busHive charter system as National Trails continues to grow, citing the great support network which the company provides. “The busHive team has been great,” Arksey said. “In the many years we have been working with busHive we have not faced any outages. Anytime we have suggestions their team is always receptive to changes and interested in learning about new ideas. It has been a great partnership and experience.”

  Presented by Q’STRAINT For too long, accessible transit has meant compliant transit. Big Blue Bus is showing the industry what it looks like when independence, not just access, becomes the standard. David Radcliff is an Emmy-nominated television writer, a co-chair of the WGA’s Disabled Writers Committee, and a person who has navigated the world in a wheelchair since birth. He is also someone who has spent a lifetime experiencing the difference between spaces that claim to be accessible and spaces that actually are. “I’ve rolled through many back alleys to get to an elevator that is technically accessible,” he says. “A lot of times you don’t know what is actually going to be accessible until you use it.” That gap between policy and lived reality sits at the heart of how transit agencies across the country can better support riders with disabilities. Compliance and independence are not the same thing. And for Radcliff — and the millions of Americans who depend on public transportation from a wheelchair — the difference is felt every single time they board a bus. “Nobody wants to have to wait for somebody else’s permission to come and go. That’s what autonomy is supposed to be — for any adult, whether they have a disability or not.” — David Radcliff When Radcliff boarded a Big Blue Bus in Santa Monica recently and used Q’STRAINT’s QUANTUM wheelchair securement system for the first time, something unexpected happened: nothing. No driver stepping away from the wheel. No hooks. No waiting. He backed into the designated space, and the arms clamped into place with the press of a button. Start to finish, it was his. “I could just push a button and watch the arms clamp into place,” he says. “There was no one that had to actually hook me to anything. Anything that has to be done with someone else’s assistance is not truly accessible — and this seems to meet the threshold of what accessibility would actually be.” Big Blue Bus began its QUANTUM pilot in 2017, driven not by a compliance checklist but by a specific ambition. “Our main goal was to provide greater independence for our wheelchair passengers,” says Eric O’Connor, Assistant Director. The agency engaged Santa Monica’s Disability Commission, surveyed riders throughout a six-to-nine-month trial and committed based on that feedback. Today, 36 buses carry the system. By the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, double that number of buses in the fleet. The operational case followed the human one. Dwell time dropped. Workers’ compensation claims tied to wheelchair securement decreased using the QUANTUM system. Driver Enrique, a Big Blue Bus Motor Coach Operator, says the shift is palpable from the seat: “I don’t have to invade anyone’s personal space.” Radcliff sees QUANTUM not just as a product but as evidence of an industry beginning to ask the right questions. “I know that for a lot of people, disability is a function of age and time,” he says. “Disability is going to be part of their life — and it may not be a scary or alienating thing, provided that our public transportation is built with that in mind.” He is direct about what that requires. Part of his work (in television, in advocacy, on committees dedicated to disabled representation) is challenging the assumption that disabled people exist outside the normal rhythm of daily life. “A lot of the assumption, even by the most well-intended people, is that disabled people don’t have to get somewhere on time, that we don’t work, that we don’t have social obligations,” he says. “None of those things are true.” A transit system designed for genuine independence doesn’t serve a niche. It serves everyone who will, at some point in their life, need it to work. The transit industry has long treated accessible service as a floor. What Big Blue Bus is demonstrating — and what Radcliff experienced firsthand — is that designing for genuine independence raises every outcome: rider dignity, driver safety, schedule performance, and long-term cost control. The agencies that understand that distinction are leading progress in serving riders of all abilities. The rest are still deciding whether compliance is enough. It isn’t. A contributed article by Q’STRAINT and Big Blue Bus, Santa Monica, CA.