In Michigan, the Flint Mass Transportation Authority budgeted $1 million to develop a central system for county-wide AVL.
Made Public Date
09/22/2008
Identifier
2008-SC00151
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Summary Information

The Flint Mass Transportation Authority (MTA) developed a plan to use ITS to improve transit services in Genessee County. Cost estimates for selected technologies, as detailed in the source report (2005) are presented below.

Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL)
Paratransit: $5,000 per bus and $1,000,000 for the central system to support AVL on 150 vehicles. Annual operations and maintenance (O&M) costs were estimated at $250,000.
Fixed route: $500,000 capital ($5,000 per vehicle for 100 full-size buses). Annual O&M costs were estimated at $75,000.

Automatic Passenger Counters
To collect detailed transit passenger ridership information, the Flint MTA planned to install automatic passenger counters on 10 MTA fixed route vehicles. Equipped vehicles were rotated amongst all of the fixed routes. Implementation costs were estimated at $50,000 ($2,500 per vehicle). O&M costs were estimated at $10,000 per year.

On-board Diagnostics
On-board diagnostic were designed to support more efficient maintenance operations and on-road troubleshooting. Capital costs were estimated at $200,000 ($2,000 per vehicle). O&M costs were estimated at $20,000 per year.

Information Dissemination
An advanced traveler information system was designed to support fleet-wide next-stop on-board bus announcements, real-time arrival-departure time information at bus stops, and a transit information Web site with trip planning tools. Capital costs were estimated at $1,500,000 million. O&M costs were estimated at $225,000 per year.

Transit Safety and Security
The budget included $1,250,000 to deploy digital video security systems on 250 vehicles at an estimated cost of $5,000 per vehicle. O&M costs were estimated at $175,000 per year.

Response and Recovery Response Management
Establishing a back-up emergency management center for coordinated emergency response between agencies was identified as a long term priority. Capital costs were estimated at $500,000. O&M costs were estimated at $50,000 per year.

Driver Communication
To improve communications between the dispatch center and drivers, MTA planned to deploy mobile data terminals on 250 vehicles. Costs were estimated at $4,000 per unit, or $1,000,000 for the fleet. O&M costs were estimated at $100,000 per year.