How CamTran Transformed Data Management, Achieved GTFS Certification, and Redesigned Their Network with Optibus

How to improve passenger information and network redesign using Optibus GTFS and Impact Analysis

Cambria County Transit Authority (CamTran), which began operating in 1976, provides rural and urban transit to Cambria County, Pennsylvania. By utilizing Optibus’ Scheduling, Planning, and Rostering software, CamTran achieved significant improvements and results including:

• Clearer data management
• Quicker reaction speeds to evolving scheduling scenarios
• Static and realtime GTFS certifications in just one year

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This case study focuses on Breanna McConell, the transportation planner responsible for creating CamTran’s timetables and schedules, and her experience using Optibus’ software.

What I like about Optibus is the ability to manage the data, the schedule, and everything on my own. The ease of using the product is awesome.

Breanna McConnell, Transportation Planner, CamTran?

Challenge & Impact #1: Data Access for Efficient Scheduling

CamTran faced significant limitations with their previous planning software, which restricted access to their own data. Bre says she “didn’t have complete access to anything” and was unable to visualize data or fully access necessary information.

Making changes involved sending spreadsheets for every adjustment to an external specialist. This complex process, with reviews that could take weeks, delayed service changes and led to transparency issues, making fleet management and information tracking difficult.

With Optibus implemented, Bre says this process now “literally takes minutes.” She can effortlessly generate multiple scheduling scenarios and make informed decisions that account for layover time and more. Optibus’ software has given her a new level of control.

“I absolutely love it,” says Bre.

CamTran is now making scheduling changes quickly and efficiently, which boosted drivers’ satisfaction at work and created more dynamic, responsive services for passengers.

“Having the ability to work better, faster, more efficiently – it means quicker turnaround time, which then gives the operators more faith in our abilities because they’re not waiting around for a change. They’re not waiting around for something to happen. It happens relatively fast. That hopefully gives them more faith in the company, our ability, and the software,” says Bre.

Now, I have access to everything. I'm able to track the schedules, the layover times - anything that I would need to make any decisions in scheduling.

Breanna McConnell, Transportation Planner, CamTran?

Challenge & Impact #2: GTFS Certification

For more than ten years, CamTran struggled to achieve GTFS certification, which is necessary for publishing service information for passengers on Google Maps. With Optibus, they achieved this certification within just one year.

Obtaining GTFS certification requires producing a file free of errors or warnings in a GTFS validator. Using Optibus, CamTran was able to identify file deployment issues and then produce and maintain error-free GTFS files. This enabled CamTran to secure both static certification and realtime certification.

Through the integration between Optibus Scheduling and CamTran’s CAD/AVL system, CamTran can now produce both static and realtime GTFS. Static GTFS provides riders with the planned schedule, while realtime GTFS updates passengers with actual bus arrival times based on their location. As a result, passengers benefit from up-to-date and reliable service information through Google Trip Planner.

With the help of Optibus and the software, once we figured out where CamTran's issue was, it was a super easy process to deploy those files and get certified.

Breanna McConnell, Transportation Planner, CamTran?

Challenge & Impact #3: Network Redesign

With full visibility and control over its data, CamTran is well positioned to conduct a comprehensive network redesign, using Optibus’ rapid scenario-generation capabilities to explore multiple possibilities.

“We are completely reevaluating our entire system from top to bottom… once we?start actually redesigning it, what our future system is going to look like, [we can?do it] all in one complete view instead of needing to look at maybe four or five plus reports separately. We can just layer it into one and see it in one big, beautiful picture,” says Bre.

Having Optibus - just the ability to do the layers, the impact analysis - is going to make my job and the ability to do a thorough evaluation of the redesign easy and possible.

Read the full Case Study here: