Macro Corporation was selected by MTA New York City Transit as prime consultant to assist in the procurement and implementation of an “Automatic Vehicle Location Monitoring (AVLM) System” providing fleet management functions and voice communications over cellular service for their paratransit service, augmenting their “ADEPT” legacy scheduling system. Today, this new system has already allowed the City to improve client service quality delivered by eight different contract coach operators totaling over 2,000 vehicles while reducing overall operating costs. Our firm performed a thorough operations needs assessment, characterized the capabilities of their relevant legacy client reservation and dispatch systems, completed a “gap analysis” and recommended system architecture, prepared a highly competitive RFP and technical specification for the new AVL system, facilitated vendor proposal evaluation and selection, supported contract negotiations, and served as MTA’s technical and project management consultant throughout its successful installation, acceptance testing, and commissioning.

The City and County of Honolulu's Department of Transportation Services engaged us to provide technical and project leadership to assist in the planning, design, purchase and implementation of a new Advanced Transit Communications (ATC) System serving the City's fixed-route bus (TheBus) and paratransit van operations. The new ATC System provides Computer Aided Dispatching (CAD) functionality incorporating GPS-based Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) functions. The new ATC System adds an 8-site mobile data communications system to the existing 800 MHz trunked mobile radio system shared with the City’s public safety services. Under this project, Macro designed and supervised the deployment of the ATC system into the City's newly-renovated bus and paratransit dispatch facilities, and 525 fixed-route buses and over 200 paratransit, supervisory, and other support vehicles. During this engagement, we prepared for the City an ATC Project Implementation Plan and Conceptual Design, completed the technical specification for the City’s RFP solicitation, evaluated competitive system integrator proposals, and led contract negotiations with the selected bidder. Subsequently, we provided project management oversight services throughout the implementation of the ATC System.

Hampton Roads Transit (HRT), serving the fast-growing area around Virginia’s lower Chesapeake Bay, selected our firm as the prime consultant leading a multi-firm team, to assist with the planning and implementation of ITS technologies for its fixed-route bus, paratransit, and LRT services. The initial work focused on developing an “ITS Master Plan” that established the foundation and justification for several consequential start-up projects. Our first assignment was helping the purchase and overseeing the installation of, and user training for, a new, more functionally modern and capable, fixed route scheduling system. Along with providing advanced scheduling, run-cutting, and operator dispatch capabilities, this new platform provided a suitable foundation for more seamless interface with other APTS/ITS components, such as a new, GPS-based, CAD/AVL system. Consequently, once the new scheduling system was commissioned, our firm followed this Master Plan by providing planning, needs assessment, conceptual design, RFP technical specification development services as well as project management support for the implementation of, an “Advanced Communications System” (ACS), which included just such a CAD/AVL system as well as an attendant and entirely new, voice and mobile data radio infrastructure.

Intercity Transit, awarded by its peers as “America’s Best Public Transportation System” for 2009, providing transit services in Olympia, WA and the surrounding areas of Thurston County, contracted with our firm to provide ITS systems engineering and consulting services to complete the needs assessment, conceptual system architecture, and RFP for, an “Advanced Communications System” (ACS) centered around a new Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD)/Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) platform accompanied by a new voice and mobile data radio communications infrastructure. The needs assessment phase included both Intercity Transit and Thurston County Roads & Transportation Services to evaluate the needs and alternatives for both organizations, and to explore the possibility of sharing legacy and forthcoming system resources. The award cited above serves as evidence that their ACS, now fully deployed and in operation, has enabled Intercity Transit to manage its fleets more efficiently and with improved dependability by providing vehicle location information, schedule adherence, real-time paratransit manifesting, while offering more efficient and reliable fleet communications.

Metropolitan Council, the governmental oversight body for Metro Transit, serving the greater metropolitan Twin Cities’ region of Minneapolis/St. Paul, engaged Macro as their prime technical engineering consultant throughout all aspects of the planning, design, procurement, and installation of a new CAD/AVL system, collectively named the “SMARTCoM” system, for their fleet of more than 1,000 buses. Additionally, our firm was the prime consultant for the relocation, expansion, and upgrade of Metro Transit’s new “Transit Control Center” (pictured here) as well as the expansion of new, nine-county, APCO Project 25 digital 800 MHz radio system needed to support SMARTCoM’s mobile data communications. During this multi-year engagement, Macro provided Metro Transit with a complete spectrum of ITS engineering and project management services to help make this project an industry-recognized success story from inception to full deployment.

San Diego’s MTS and the nearby North County Transit District (NCTD) decided to work together to design and implement a Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) infrastructure for the region to better serve the respective operational needs of these two transit agencies while leveraging new technologies to enhance a new level of seamless transit throughout the county. We were selected as the technology/systems consultant to help these transit agencies define and implement this infrastructure. The engagement started with the development of a strategic plan to identify the functional and communications requirements for this complex ITS infrastructure, followed immediately by the deployment of a common, county-wide voice and mobile data radio communications network and Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) System with Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) platforms serving both agencies. In addition to APCs, farebox integration, and other “smart bus” technologies, this project also included a separate acquisition and integration of a new fixed-route scheduling system for MTS, NCTD, San Diego Trolley, and other transit agencies in the county. The Strategic Plan was immediately followed by our firm preparing a single RFP and accompanying technical specifications that captured these unique needs, and providing technical and program management support during the evaluation of vendor proposals and contract negotiations with each of the vendors selected, and finally overseeing implementation and acceptance testing of all systems.