'Real Time' passenger information coming to DCTA

Within the next year, the Denton County Transportation Authority (DCTA) will launch a new program that will provide passengers with real time travel information.

"Improving the passenger experience is a strategic focus of this agency," said Jarod Varner, vice president of transit operations. "Providing innovative trip planning and fare payment tools to our passengers will provide greater access to information necessary to make using DCTA services as easy as possible."

"Where's My Ride" is meant to make the DCTA system more easily accessible to passengers. The program will allow passengers to obtain predictive arrival information for the next bus or train at a passenger's particular stop location via mobile application, short message service (SMS) text alert, telephone Interactive Voice Response or through the DCTA website.

"The free application will be compatible with the Android and iPhone models," said Dee Leggett, vice president of program development. "It might be available with the Blackberry, but it will be more tailored to the other phones."

"Where's My Ride" will use accurate location data provided by a Global Positioning Device mounted inside each DCTA Connect bus and A-train railcar. The information will be integrated with the operator login information, including the route, run and destination sign code, and will then be transmitted wirelessly to a server using onboard cellular equipment. This server will integrate location and login information with schedules and map files to output predictive arrival information to the customers. Passengers can subscribe to specific routes through the system so that alerts can be auto-generated based on passenger preferences.

"Right now, the information is available on Facebook, Twitter and through email," Leggett said. "We'll keep using that until the new system is fully launched."

The "Where's My Ride" program began 18 months ago when DCTA applied for a grant to fund it. In the spring of 2012, it was approved.

"For the past year we've been working on scoping the project and trying to decide what we wanted out of the program," Leggett said. "We knew what our objective for the program was, so we spent time researching other transit agencies to see what did and didn't work. Now we're in the development stage."

DCTA expects the program to launch by the end of 2013.

Along with the "Where's My Ride" system, DCTA has also partnered with Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) and the Fort Worth Transportation Authority (The T) in developing "GO Pass," a regional mobile ticketing application. The "Go Pass" application will provide passengers with an additional option to purchase their transit pass via smartphone for any of the three transit agencies in the North Texas region. "The GoPass feature should come out a bit sooner than the Where's My Ride system, but at the end of the day, the two programs will be merged," Leggett said.

In addition to enhanced passenger information, the agency also plans to build a mobile-friendly website and continue to improve "GO Request," the agency's customer service mobile application.

For information visit www.dcta.net.

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