Paul Bass Photo
The B3, rush hour: 20 minutes late, crammed, no word to riders.
The state has finally put GPS devices on most New Haven public buses. They just don’t work yet.
They might work by the end of the year.
That’s the latest blip in the sad saga of the state Department of Transportation (DOT)‘s promise that, if it can’t improve New Haven’s broken bus system (which DOT’s chief defends as “wonderful” and “convenient”) for now, it can at least let riders know when their buses are running late and where they are.
CT Transit made that promise two years ago.
It made the promise following a series of articles in the Independent detailing outdated routes and schedules that prevent many people from reasonably being able to use CT Transit. Mayor Toni Harp declared that better mass transit is a “civil right” and has since repeatedly criticized the state of bus service in New Haven. Her administration specifically asked for the GPS system in early 2014.
In December 2014, DOT Public Transportation Administrator Michael Sanders promised that by the end of 2015, all New Haven buses would have new technology, including GPS systems, that would let customers find out, via apps (such as Google Transit) on their cell phones, the real-time locations of the buses they’re waiting for.
“We will have a new bus system in New Haven before the end of next year,” Sanders said then.
But by the end of 2015, there was no sign of the new systems in New Haven.
It turned out that DOT decided to test the systems out in Hartford and New Britain instead of New Haven because, according to officials, it was the simplest way to test them. The test runs connected to technology used on the CT Fastrack bus system in that part of the state. And the DOT is based there, with more staff to monitor the test.
In March 2016, Sanders made a new prediction: New Haven buses would have the new systems by September 2016.
It’s now late November. Sanders stated in an email message that 112 of 129 New Haven buses have the new equipment on board; the equipment will not only offer the GPS real-time info on apps, but also post messages inside and outside the bus about upcoming stops.
When it’s operational. It’s not operational now.
Why’s that?
“You guys caught up in [challenges with] wiring harnesses and multi-agency software,” DOT Transit Manager Lisa Rivers reported in a conversation Monday.
A CT Transit “info” pole at an Orange Street stop, where the Q schedule is too close to the wall of the adjoining Foot Locker for riders to read.
New Haven’s fleet includes different kinds of buses of various ages, Rivers explained. “They have different insides of each of them.” That meant the state needed its vendor, a company called the Trapeze Group, to produce a bunch of different wiring harnesses to support the systems. That took extra time.
A second problem also emerged, Rivers said: The state needs one central system that enables each district’s dispatch center to access localized information. The DOT discovered that under the current design, dispatchers in New Britain would be seeing information and talking to buses in not just New Britain, but Waterbury, New Haven, and Hartford. That didn’t make sense. But it also didn’t make sense to install separate servers and software and programming in each part of the state, Sanders said. That’s in part because not all regions operate the same way. For instance, unlike in New Haven, CT Transit buses in New Britain are operated not by the state, but by privately owned companies. DOT concluded it shouldn’t be installing state equipment in a non-state-owned facility.
So it asked the vendor to design a new statewide multi-agency software system that would enable New Haven, New Britain, Waterbury, and Hartford riders to access real-time info about their local buses without wading through real-time info about other cities’ buses.
“That has taken time for them to develop. It has also taken time to negotiate the scope of work prices,” Rivers said.
Rivers predicted all the buses will have the new antennae and mobile data terminals, and that it will all be turned on and beaming info to waiting riders, by the dawn of 2017. If not a little sooner.
“We’re hoping before the end of the year,” Rivers said, ” so we can say Merry Christmas.”
Meanwhile, the city is working on a state-funded “mobility” study about how to overhaul the bus system so more people can choose to ride it rather than see it as an option of last resort. Stay tuned.
I've known Mike for decades and he is a decent guy. But this is pitiful. Surely, ConnDOT knew that the New Haven bus fleet has a variety of buses, since it purchased them. Other transit authorities that installed GPS years ago (New York, Chicago, etc.) dealt with this issue. I think ConnDOT and the vendor are jointly and severally liable (as my lawyer friends would say) for this screw up.