Transport agencies are under constant pressure to deliver growth in passenger numbers, promote greater staff and passenger safety, and develop new and improved services that enhance the customer experience. A key component to this is having the right communications system in place – in this lesson from the Tait Radio Academy, we discuss how the Transport industry can benefit from Unified Critical Communications.
The below text is a summary of the Tait Radio Academy lesson. For the full course, click here
Challenges the Transport Industry Faces
Public transport systems need to increase patronage and trim costs to help cities reduce road congestion and manage the transportation requirements of growing urban populations.
An open standards-based Unified Critical Communications (UCC) solution can help with both patronage and costs, and can replace existing proprietary systems that are hardware-based, expensive to maintain, upgrade, or remove, and do not scale.
Benefits of Unified Critical Communications for Transport
A key ingredient is a multi-bearer communications gateway installed in each bus. A UCC platform inside buses provides bearer services within the bus and between the bus and the control center. This vehicle area network helps to supports various specific benefits, including:
- Interoperability between bus location systems and multiple back-offices (e.g. belonging to different bus operators),
- Bluetooth® automatic passenger counting,
- Smart ticketing systems that can handle a variety of ticket types and media,
- Access to custom on-board IT applications,
- Reliable and more up-to-the minute timetables and real-time passenger information (RTPI) and electronic signage,
- Integrated transport (including buses, trams, and trains) for trips across different connections and even different operators,
- Better safety and security for drivers, street teams & passenger through resilient voice communications, video surveillance and on-board cameras,
- Predictive maintenance enabled by vehicle telematics and tele-diagnostics.
Open standard interfaces, IP protocols, and the capabilities of converged wireless communications over multiple devices provide the essential connectivity that holds this innovative architecture together to deliver improved services across the board.
And, more generally, it promises to create a public transport system that is more efficient, more flexible, cheaper to run, greener, and gives passengers a better experience.
Tait Radio Academy
Want to know more? For the full lesson, head over to the Introduction to Unified Critical Communications course on the Tait Radio Academy, where you can learn about the benefits of Unified Critical Communications for your industry!
The Tait Radio Academy is a free training resource, providing foundational education on a wide range of critical communications topics. From basic radio awareness to Industrial Control Systems, there is a range of material for people in both technical and non-technical roles.
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