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.
Avego has joined a diverse coalition of 70 business, environmental and transportation leaders in urging President Obama to invest in the deployment of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to accelerate job creation and economic recovery.
The coalition, which includes Former Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters, the U.S. Chamber, T4 America, AAA and other public and private sector leaders, joined ITS America in signing a letter to President Obama outlining the numerous economic, environmental, and transportation benefits of investing in ITS technologies.
The letter, which was delivered to the White House on December 17th, highlights a recent report by the London School of Economics and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation which finds that investment in ITS:
Creates a ‘network effect’ throughout the economy and directly benefits economic growth by stimulating job creation across multiple sectors, including green jobs, high-tech, automotive, information technology, consumer electronics, and related industries; and
Provides a foundation for long-term benefits, including government cost savings, economy-wide productivity and an improved quality of life.
Last week Avego held its latest focus group with participants in its Shared Transport pilot program at University College Cork (UCC), in Ireland. As the meeting took place on Thanksgiving, it was a timely opportunity to thank the group for their continuing participation and to provide a preview of Avego V2.0.
“We really appreciate everyone’s enthusiasm for the pilot, and the feedback we receive every week has driven the improvements and new capabilities in Version 2.0,” said Avego’s Pilot Programs Manager, Audrey Linnane. “Everyone is looking forward to trying it out for themselves, and to the upcoming expansion of the pilot to more staff and students.”
Focus Group at UCC
Avego’s UCC pilot aims to expand affordable commuting options for staff and students by providing a marketplace for drivers to offer their unused seats to other people in real time. 20 staff and students regularly use Avego’s iPhone app, while many hundreds more have registered their interest in participating in the next stage of the pilot, as both drivers and riders.
As well as being featured in the New York Times, and other local, national and international press, the pilot was also recently the focus of this evening news story on Irish national TV station TG4 (note: this video is in the Irish language, with English subtitles).
Avego’s Futurefleet, which is built on top of the same transport management infrastructure that Avego’s Shared Transport consumer application runs on, is seeing an explosion of growth and acceptance in North America.
Avego’s original, and still unique, strength of allowing consumers to advertise and / or book seats in passing vehicles provides cities and transit agencies with something they have longed for in their bus and public transit networks: an inexpensive, responsive and rapidly deployable solution for real-time passenger information.
In the last month, 3 more North American cities, which will be announced soon, have signed on to roll out Futurefleet-equipped buses. The attraction of the Futurefleet system is not only the cost, which can be up to 10 times less expensive than legacy technologies, but also the increased speed, capabilities and convenience of the Avego web-hosted solution.
Avego has just opened its San Diego office
Avego has just opened a new office in San Diego, which will provide post-sales support to our growing list of customers in North America. The new office is headed up by Leon Wong, who joins Avego from OneTouch – a leading provider of interactive distance learning applications, where he filled the roles of Senior Content Developer, Sales Engineer and Project Manager.
On Friday, November 13th, Avego won the Emerging Software Business award at the Irish Software Association’s Software Industry Awards. This award is made to the most promising emerging software company in Ireland.
Held at the Burlington Hotel in Dublin, the Software Industry Awards recognizes world-class contributions by indigenous software firms to Ireland’s smart economy.
Avego at the Software Industry Awards
Avego was also selected as a finalist in the “Technical Innovation” and “Sales Achievement” categories, and was the only company to be a finalist in three categories.
Speaking at the awards, ISA Chairman Paul Sweetman said: “The companies and individuals that we have recognised tonight have generated fantastic value for customers and investors this year. These talented individuals will drive Ireland’s future economic growth.”
This award is the second award that Avego has received recently, having already won the “High Potential Start-up” award at the IT@Cork awards in October, and demonstrates Avego’s excellence in providing software for improving the efficiency of passenger transport.
2009 Software Industry Awards Winners:
Company of the Year 2009: Openet Emerging Software Business Award: Avego
Sales Achievement Award: Percana
The Technical Innovation Award: iTab
Corporate Social Responsibility Award: Norkom Technologies
Collaboration of the Year Award: Local Social
Software Person of the Year: Paul Kerley, CEO of Norkom,
Student Medal: Yuandong Zhu of UCD
More information about these awards is available here.
