Smarter buses must boost transit use to be worth investment

The pokey old way of scheduling city buses is about to be transformed by a $1.9 million package of computer software and hardware – or at least that’s the hope.

City council on Monday is expected to approve the purchase of an “intelligent transportation system” that keeps buses on schedule, lets passengers track their bus on a smartphone, tablet or computer, and a host of other good things.

That’s the message in a staff report recommending the contract be awarded to Strategic Mapping Inc., a Toronto firm that also supplied the voice system that announces stops as buses travel their routes.

Will the smart system perform as advertised? It should, given that Peterborough is behind the times in adopting computerized scheduling and tracking. City staff spent two years looking at similar systems in other centres and are convinced the benefits are real.

The claim for those benefits is comprehensive. The report lists 12 different features designed to make service more efficient, less expensive and safer.

A rider with a smartphone will be able to download an app that show the best route to get from Point A to Point B and tracks an approaching transit bus in real time. The software sends location updates every 30 seconds.

If a bus is full and leaves some disappointed riders waiting at their stop (which apparently happens on the Trent and Fleming student lines), dispatchers will know and can immediately send out a second bus.

The promised payoff of those and other new and improved features is a major reduction in buses that run late or erratically.

“This has the potential to increase ridership by drawing more riders as potential users begin to understand how reliable and on-time the transit system is,” according to the staff report.

And therein lies the $1.9 million question: Will smart buses draw more riders?

In 2012 the city paid consultants to review the bus system and come up with improvements. Some major changes were proposed, notably putting more buses on busy routes so they arrived every 20 minutes instead of every 40 minutes.

There was also at least one big shift in routes that affected the north-end and buses serving Trent University.

Those recommended improvements were only partially adopted and then tweaked when they turned out to be either difficult and expensive to meet (20-minute arrival times) or flawed and ineffective (route changes).

The consultants also produced a five-year performance projection.

By 2017 ridership would reach 4.2 million and the net cost of the transit system to taxpayers would be $6.6 million.

As it turned out, the actual 2017 ridership number was 4 million, close to the projection. However, during the five-year period Fleming College students agreed to a mandatory city bus pass program that produced a significant bump on its own.

On cost, the projection was not so accurate. Last year’s taxpayer subsidy was $7.6 million, $1 million more than forecast.

Public transportation is a necessary social service and needs to subsidized. However, it also needs to be as cost-effective as possible.

Assuming service does become more reliable that message will have to be publicized in a compelling way, inducing more people to ride.

And if smart buses don’t attract more riders and reduce operating costs, the city will have to consider whether high-tech investments are worthwhile.