Public Transport (PT) plays an important role in EU economy and society and is considered the main “tool” for achieving a “sustainable and smart” mobility in terms of accessibility, clean environment and social cohesion as set up in the EU policy for urban and metropolitan areas.
Among the PT offer, bus service covers the most relevant market share: from 80% (in metropolitan areas) to 100% (in small and medium towns) respect the other PT modalities (i.e tram, metro, light tram, etc.) involving about 14.000 Public Transport Operators (PTO) and 760.000 buses.
Therefore the high performances of Public Transport services, and in particular high quality of bus service, is a key factor for improving the competitiveness and social cohesion of urban areas and for reducing injuries and fatalities, CO2 and NOx (not last the health problems) due to the well known traffic congestion situation.
Regularity and reliability are the main indicators of the quality of the bus service and if not controlled they impact directly PTO costs (i.e. added vehicles in service for restoring the planned headway, higher fuel consumption, higher costs for vehicles maintenance, conflicting relations with drivers, etc.) and Public Transport Authorities/Agencies (PTA) policies (poor marketability of PT, increase of the use of private cars and critical environmental critical factors, etc.), PT users (increased waiting time at bus stop, lost connections, higher travelling time, etc.) and the whole community (increased costs for low quality service, decrease of urban livability, safety problems, etc.).
For monitoring and guaranteeing the regularity and reliability (and therefore the quality) of the bus services usually an ICT system is operated by the PT operator that, in the market, is indicated as Automatic Vehicle Monitoring system - AVM.
CELSO is a “revolutionary” low-cost AVM for bus transport market supporting the quality of bus service during the operation. CELSO allows to monitor and control the reliability and regularity guaranteeing their consistency with planned timetable, to collect service data (location, events, etc.) and to evaluate the service performances, with at least 70% costs reduction respect the current market AVM products.
In particular, CELSO is an effective solution for small/medium Public Transport Operators (PTO) and Public Transport Authorities/Agencies (PTA) which usually can’t face the high investment and operation costs of an AVM system.
In general better performances of PT in terms of reliability and regularity, supported by CELSO, will contribute to improve the efficiency and marketability of the service (reduced waiting time, faster travelling time) thus contributing to face the traffic congestion and pollution situation enhancing city livability, accessibility, competitiveness, social cohesion and reducing number of fatalities and health problems.
