Operations Control Centers - Competencies
Whether for passenger rail operations, fixed-route bus service, or even transit police dispatching, all transit agencies rely on secure and well-equipped control centers. Today’s transportation control centers are architectural showpieces – complete with ergonomic workstation furniture, status overview displays, situation rooms, access control systems, and sophisticated environmental air handling and lighting controls. These facilities combine to promote a secure, efficient, modern, and safe workspace for dispatchers, passenger information specialists, service and maintenance supervisors, and others that interact daily with passenger rail and public transit bus management systems.
Macro’s “Rail, Control Center, and Infrastructure” practice area works both directly with end-users and with many of today’s leading architecture and engineering design firms to conduct operational, physical, and ergonomic analyses and to design control system management workstations and display systems. We have the operational knowledge and the planning, engineering, and project management experience to design and oversee the construction and commissioning of these control centers and the systems that go into them.
Our firm employs today’s industry-recognized ergonomics and control center facilities design experts – many of whom had prior “hands-on” experience working for transit agencies, passenger rail operations, public safety dispatch/call-taking centers, audio/visual design firms, and utility companies. Many of our staff in this practice area not only have the technical expertise to design these systems on time and on budget, but also bring with them the practical experience of having actually worked in these control centers during their respective careers.
Macro has designed modern control centers for transit and passenger rail agencies for some of the largest rail operators in the US and Canada. Thus, our firm has been at the forefront of developing the set of specifications and standards traditionally expected from today’s rail management and control systems. Our firm is a commercial, long-standing member of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).
Our cadre of control center design engineers are experts in:
- Overview Display Systems – Large-scale, high-definition, modular, multi-source data and video displays configured for simultaneous applications.
- Display layout – Showing the agency’s transportation network with real-time device status.
- Workstations – highly reconfigurable and ergonomic control center workspaces containing computer displays, human interface devices, audio-visual systems, telecommunications, task lighting, and work areas.
- Facilities & Access Control Systems – closed-circuit television, intrusion detection, lighting systems, noise abatement, and emergency power management.
