Robyn Sheehan, Data Analyst & Customer Service Manager
Robyn Sheehan joined Avego last summer, having graduated with an Honors Degree in Business Information Systems from UCC. Now based at Avego’s global Network Operations Center in Kinsale, Ireland, Robyn has previously worked with a major retail outlet in Cork and Barclays Bank in London.
Robyn Sheehan
Since joining Avego, Robyn has been busy implementing a new internal knowledge sharing tool for Avego’s staff, providing support to transport operators and individual consumers worldwide, and ensuring that operators automatically receive detailed nightly reports indicating the thousands of tickets they’ve sold each day using Futurefleet’s in-vehicle and online ticket sales capabilities. Robyn explains what she likes most about her role:
“I really enjoy improving the way that information is shared, whether that’s internally amongst staff or providing new reports to customers. I think that’s an important way of strengthening relationships – but it’s also important to keep a smile on your face, even when you’re on the phone!”
Not only does she excel at work, but Robyn is also a champion Irish dancer, achieving 9th in the world championships and 2nd in Ireland.
“I started dancing when I was four and it’s allowed me to travel the world, including Seattle where I performed as part of the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations six years running. When I stopped competing, I began to teach children, which I really enjoy.” Robyn also loves to read and is currently obsessed with the Twilight series!
Avego is recruiting. If you are interested in joining Avego, check our our careers page.
This post is extracted from the Avego monthly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.
Avego Participating in Major EU Showcase of GNSS Projects
As a leading developer of location-based transportation applications, Avego is very involved in the development of several cutting-edge GNSS (global navigation satellite systems) technology applications for the European Union. Some of these projects will be showcased at the Galileo Application Days event in Brussels next week.
The Galileo Speed Warning Project
For example, attendees can view a demo of the Galileo Speed Warning (GSW) CARAT Counter system, which uses location-based technology to incentivize safer driving behaviour. The end-product is an in-vehicle device that displays a counter of CARAT points which increments as long as a driver drives within the speed limit, and can later be traded for rewards, such as lower car insurance.
Attendees can also visit the OPTI-TRANS stand to learn more about an innovative location-based mobile traveler information and guiding system that Avego is helping to develop for the city of Madrid. The system will serve as a personal transportation navigation tool, presenting optimal routing to Madrid’s commuters, based on their current location and the real-time availability of empty seats on public transportation and in private cars (“shared transport”).
Hosted by the European Commission, Galileo Application Days will be held at the Charlemagne Conference Centre in Brussels from March 3rd to March 5th. In addition to Avego taking part in the “Applications Village”, Avego’s Eurasian Sales Director, Jonathan Guard, will also be giving a presentation on the GSW project at 11:40 on March 5th.
This post is extracted from the Avego monthly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.
Avego China launches 2 new projects at Ascendas IT Park
Avego’s China office, which was officially opened last October, has just launched 2 new projects that are designed to improve transportation efficiency at the Ascendas IT park in Dalian, where Avego China is based.
Employees at Ascendas IT Park in Dalian
A new Shared Taxi system will save costs for local employers and employees who pay to take a taxi home in the evenings when the public transportation services have ended. The system matches together people traveling to the same areas. Users interact with the system via a touchscreen interface in the lobby of the office building.
On average, 300 of the 3500 people working in the office building take a taxi home in the evening, which amounts to taxi charges of millions of Chinese RMB per year. Avego’s new system will reduce these costs by 40%.
An LED sign displaying real-time passenger information
Avego has also setup its Futurefleet system, with LED signs displaying real-time passenger information for a shuttle bus service between Avego’s office building and the entrance of Ascendas park. Employees can now make better decisions about whether or not to make the long walk to the entrance of the park, or wait for the next shuttle bus.
Anyone interested in learning more about Futurefleet or Avego’s Shared Taxi system should contact the Avego sales team today.
This post is extracted from the Avego monthly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.
The Obama administration released its 2011 budget proposal on February 1st, which includes a request of $78.8 billion for FY2011, up from $77 billion in FY2010. The budget includes $530 million as part of the President’s Partnership for Sustainable Communities to help State and local governments invest in sustainable transportation infrastructure “that integrates with housing development and other critical investments”.
President Obama
The DOT requested budget, which can be viewed in full here includes “High-Priority Performance Goals” for the coming year(s).
Additionally, the 2011 budget includes $4 billion to create a National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund to invest in projects of regional or national significance. This marks an important departure from the Federal Government’s traditional way of spending on infrastructure through grants to specific States and localities. The Fund will allocate resources based on demonstrable merit and analytical measures of performance. It will provide planning, feasibility, and analytical capacity to help sponsors identify high-value projects from around the country and then carefully select the most worthwhile projects.
To learn more about securing federal funding for real-time passenger information implementations of Futurefleet, or for a Shared Transport pilot, please contact Avego’s Director of Government Relations, Jason Conley.
In the United States, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is growing in popularity as a transportation option for public agencies. Some agencies are putting out Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for BRT installations, while many others are in the exploratory phase.
However, Orange County in Los Angeles already has a wildly successful BRT system that was launched in 2004. In conjunction with the local rail system and the addition of more bike racks on buses, the BRT is a unique multi-modal transportation system that is available to commuters in L.A. 24 hours a day and cuts commute times by half. The system is now being modeled by other cities around the world.
Check out this great film by streetfilms.org to learn more and to see BRT in action:
Learn more about Futurefleet, Avego’s end-to-end real-time management system for passenger transport operators here.
World’s largest vanpool service provider incorporates Avego’s Shared Transport technology.
Avego is pleased to announce that it has partnered with VPSI to develop an integrated technology solution for the company, including providing its groundbreaking Shared Transport technology, all of which will make it easier and more convenient for commuters in the United States to join and use vanpools on their daily commute.
VPSI
VPSI is the world’s largest vanpool service provider, with a fleet of more than 5,000 vans accommodating over 25 million passenger trips annually. Avego’s end-to-end vanpool management capabilities are already being enabled in some regions of VPSI’s nationwide transportation network.
“Due to the ongoing desire of commuters to save money on their daily commutes, as well as an increased awareness of the need for energy independence, reduced carbon emissions, and the sheer convenience of not having to drive to work, VPSI has seen record levels of demand for new vanpools,” said VPSI President Jeff Henning. “Our partnership with Avego will give our vanpool customers greater information services, while allowing us to even more rapidly deploy new vanpools.”
Initially the system is being used to provide automated reporting on passenger miles traveled to government agencies, streamlined vanpool formation and management processes, extensive in-vehicle driver management capabilities, and real-time passenger information. However, the prospect also exists for matching riders with vanpools in real time, if desired by the agency or VPSI’s customers.
Avego’s system includes an in-vehicle touchscreen mobile data terminal (MDT) with GPS and audio announcement capabilities, a web application for commuters to self-organize and grow their vanpools, and extensive reporting capabilities.
To find out how to get VPSI vanpools with Avego’s technology in your area, or to see how the system works up close, please contact info@avego.com.
Sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, hitch-hiking around town or cross country became dangerous. Around the same time, credit became more abundant in the US and more people were able to buy cars than ever before. Cars also became increasingly important as people looked to raise their families in affordable housing further and further away from city centers. This helped to create an environment perfectly suited for Americans to get in their cars one-by-one and drive everywhere around town and beyond.
This perfect storm created an America of single occupancy vehicles, urban sprawl and commute times expanding from a few minutes to hours a day. The days of hitch-hiking were gone and carpooling became the ugly step sister for many years, considered dangerous and inconvenient by many.
However, in the last five years, as the US becomes more environmentally responsible and resistant to foreign oil dependency, we’ve come to realize a long-term solution needs to be found. Beyond hybrid vehicles, electric cars and public transit, we have to get more people to change their narrow view of owning a vehicle for themselves and instead think in terms of maximizing seat capacity for a better way of life.
The Avego solution is simple. Reduce the number of single occupant vehicles on our roads by creating a network of Shared Transport vehicles, in which people are matched together in real time to occupy a single vehicle, thereby saving gas, money and harmful C02 emissions.
Now, you can become part of the solution by sharing your car in a safe and economically positive environment by broadcasting empty seat availability and choosing to take on riders (for compensation). Conversely, as a rider, you can broadcast your destination and be matched in real time with drivers going where you need to go, when you need to go.
Safe, efficient and environmentally friendly… that’s the Avego Shared Transport solution.
Twitter. Most often described with the off-putting title of “a microblogging platform”, Twitter is actually a highly effective business tool, through which an organization can provide a stream of short (140 character) updates (”tweets”) to an expanding community of followers.
In the last year, Twitter has grown in popularity amongst transit agencies in the US as a tool for communicating with their customers about service changes and general news. While the number of agencies using Twitter is still small, agencies are increasingly trying to figure out how it can be of real strategic value.
Some great articles have been written about the business benefits of “tweeting” (such as here, here and here), but the specific role that Twitter can play in your transit agency requires some internal analysis. A general rule of thumb is to start by considering Twitter in terms of “how we communicate with our customers”, including potential customers.
Twitter provides some specific benefits to transit agencies, such as the ability to provide real-time service updates to customers, but it also offers more traditional marketing benefits, such as generating leads and web traffic. Once a decision has been made about how Twitter will be used to communicate to the world, then it can be assigned to a particular group with specific objectives.
When deciding how to use Twitter in your agency, look towards other related organizations that are already using Twitter, by searching for “#transit” on Twitter.
Avego uses Twitter to communicate the latest in transit related news and technology. You can find us at www.twitter.com/AvegoUSA
Avego Managing Director, Sean O’Sullivan, will be speaking next week at the 89th annual Transportation Research Board (TRB) meeting in Washington, DC, as part of a workshop titled “Reinventing Carpooling to Meet Transportation’s Greatest Challenges”.
Sean O'Sullivan
Mr. O’Sullivan is joining other transportation industry luminaries during this three hour workshop, which takes place on January 10th (1.30PM – 4.30PM), to discuss carpooling, vanpooling, ridesharing and the use of mobile devices to enable real-time shared transport.
The workshop will focus on strategies for reshaping the political, policy, and practical framework for carpooling and vanpooling and will be a catalyst for reinvigorating and elevating this modal choice to meet transportation’s greatest challenges: climate change, energy security, traffic congestion, quality of life, environmental damage, and budget constraints.
To learn more about this workshop you can visit the TRB site here.
Sean O’Sullivan is founding partner at Avego and previously co-founded MapInfo, a $175 million software and services business, headquartered in New York State.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently announced the availability of $280 million for urban circulator projects such as streetcars, buses, and bus facilities to support communities, expand business opportunities and improve people’s quality of life while also creating jobs.
US Department of Transportation
The money represents the first batch of funding by the Obama Administration for its Livability Initiative, a joint venture of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“This represents a significant effort to promote livable communities, improve the quality of life for more Americans and create more transportation choices that serve the needs of individual communities,” Secretary LaHood said. “Fostering the concept of livability in transportation projects will stimulate America’s neighborhoods to become safer, healthier and more vibrant.”
A maximum amount of $25 million per project will be made available from approximately $130 million in unallocated discretionary New Starts/Small Starts Program funds. Eligible projects include streetcars and other urban circulator systems. Priority will be given to projects that connect destinations and foster the redevelopment of communities into walkable, mixed-use, high-density environments.
Transit operators interested in acquiring FuturefleetTM to enable reliable real-time passenger information (RTPI) for their fleets can now apply for this funding.
Avego has compiled two documents with more information on funding opportunities for transit agencies in .pdf format, which are now available here and here. Contact information is provided on each document if you have more questions or would like assistance in applying for these grants.
Robyn Sheehan joined Avego last summer, having graduated with an Honors Degree in Business Information Systems from UCC. Now based at Avego’s global Network Operations Center in Kinsale, Ireland, Robyn has previously worked with a major retail outlet in Cork and Barclays Bank in London.
For example, attendees can view a demo of the Galileo Speed Warning (GSW) CARAT Counter system, which uses location-based technology to incentivize safer driving behaviour. The end-product is an in-vehicle device that displays a counter of CARAT points which increments as long as a driver drives within the speed limit, and can later be traded for rewards, such as lower car insurance.
