A Visit to the OC Transpo Control Centre
This Saturday past, I managed to get to the OC Transpo headquarters for their version of the Doors Open Ottawa open house and guided tour. Got there 20 minutes before closing (3:40pm) but ended up staying until almost 5pm because I hung out with a cool couple and their almost newborn baby so we got special “ok you guys can stay late” treatment.
Here are the highlights:
* They plan to have all ~950 buses equipped with GPS by September. I talked to a geeky guy in charge of the GPS technology and specifically asked him if there were plans to use GPS info to allow customers to check if their bus was on time. He said yes, they’re looking into putting live GPS-based info on the 560-1000 info line and also on the web. This means I can sit in my office at the end of the workday and see that my bus is held up in traffic and is projected to arrive at my stop in 8 minutes. When trying to forecast the arrival time, they would take into account how delayed the last buses going past my stop were as well as the present location of my bus. Very awesome! This addresses what is by far the biggest complaint of bus riders — not knowing exactly when the bus will come!
* In the control centre, they have a moving map display showing the location and speed of all buses equipped with GPS (currently about 250 of them). Buses that are early show up in red (very bad), buses that are on time show up green, buses that are late show up yellow, and buses that are out of service or waiting to take over from a breakdown show up blue.
* OC Transpo is the only bus network in North America that has 10 buses waiting on standby to take over if another bus breaks down or otherwise incapacitated. Often these buses wait at Hurdman, since there’s a Quickie mart and bathrooms there.
* During rush hour, there are 750 buses on the road, and around 5 controllers handling radio communications. All the controllers have worked as bus drivers in the past, so they have some idea of what the drivers are dealing with.
* If you call and complain about a bus going past without stopping “and it wasn’t even full” they will laugh their asses off at you because you couldn’t see the huge baby strollers that were taking up the bus below window level. 
* There are cameras placed at many intersections to help monitor traffic flow. The controllers can view any of these in real time.
* There’s a little alcove to the side of the control room where two security controllers sit and handle the transpo cops. They also monitor two large projection screens, each one showing live surveillance camera feeds from 9 transit stations. So there are a total of 18 locations, each one cycling through its different camera views. They really do see everything. I spend up to half an hour a day at Lincoln Fields and have noticed a few cameras, but after seeing the security room I have a new appreciation for just how much Big Brother can see. If anything interesting happens (like a gathering of people for a fight or drug deal, etc) they take over the camera, point it at the subjects and zoooooom right in. I saw them do it to some guy as a demo, and his head filled the entire 8 foot-high screen. All footage is stored. Never pick your nose in a transit station! (And yes, they see people doing the nasty in the wee hours of the morning. The cameras have excellent low-light performance.)
* All transpo cops carry defibrillators in their cars (and are trained in using them).
* If you pick up one of the emergency phones in a transit station, it calls directly to this security control room.
* Adjacent to the control room is a separate area where 5 or 6 trip planning customer service people answer phones. They handle an average of 30 calls per person per hour, so they’re pretty busy. They use software that looks a lot like the online Travel Planner but isn’t web based.
It was really neat. For me, the coolest things by far were the promises about GPS functionality and seeing the security surveillance stuff. A worthwhile trip!
June 7th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
“OC Transpo is the only bus network in North America that has 10 buses waiting on standby to take over if another bus breaks down or otherwise incapacitated.”
That’s because some of the buses are such beaters and it’s impossible to predict when they’re about to give up the ghost. Of course, not many other bus networks in North America have to deal with such insane climatic swings and rough driving conditions as OC Transpo.