The MTA announced a few days ago that they would be implementing a new system to track and report on the state of their vehicle fleet. The Baltimore Sun has an article, and the Department of Transportation has some details. They say they’ll be done by 2006; no indication on when they’ll start putting things in.
It looks like this could be very nice and should address a few of my complaints about the MTA. The Next Train Arrival signs should nicely handle my complaints about not being notified when things go wrong and trains get delayed, while the Next Vehicle Arrival signs will do the same thing for the buses, a feat that’s currently pretty much impossible.
They tout a public announcement system that “will provide audio announcements at Light Rail, Metro & MARC passenger stations.” Of course, they already have this, at least at Light Rail and MARC stations—the MARC system even gets used. Perhaps they’re just indicating that they’ll begin to use the ones at Light Rail stops, too.
With the buses being tracked in real time, they’ll be providing real-time trip planning, which will also be a nice added feature. This will be available via the MTA’s website; with any luck, it’ll be simple enough that I will be able to write a program to get an overview of my trips to and from work right before I leave.
The Automatic Passenger Counter should be nice for redistributing routes and schedules based on actual ridership.
And finally, they mention that the buses will be controlled via wireless LAN. I hope they’ve got good safeguards on those.
So the new system looks good. It’s at least got the potential to make public transit in Baltimore a little better. Just how much of that potential will be realized remains to be seen.