Buses now in information superhighway

Alex Coolman

GLENDALE -- Waiting for the bus to arrive could become a little less

trying for transit riders under a high-tech program unveiled Wednesday by

city officials.

The program, designed by the Emeryville company NextBus, uses global

positioning system chips to track to the progress of buses as they wend

their way through the streets. The information provided by those chips is

messaged by computers and then displayed on digital signs at bus stops.

The result, as city officials demonstrated Wednesday, is that riders

no longer need to guess what the schedule of a bus might be or whether

the bus in question is actually running on schedule.

Instead, the digital sign flashes a constantly updated progress report

on the arrival times of specific buses, indicating whether they are

several minutes from a stop or just down the block.

“The average Joe can walk down to the bus stop and know when the next

bus is arriving,” declared City Councilman Bob Yousefian.

Office workers who have Internet access can also benefit from the new

system, because the information on bus arrival times is available over

the Web. If there are any transit riders who happen to be carrying around

Internet-equipped cellular phones or Palm Pilots, they, too, can download

data about their bus.

The $1.1-million program, the first of its kind in the Los Angeles

area, is funded by a grant from the Metropolitan Transportation

Authority. It has been installed on Beeline Routes 1 and 2 and is

scheduled to be expanded to all routes by fall.

After the installation, the city will pay $5,000 per bus every five

years to keep the vehicles registered with NextBus, said Jano Baghdanian,

Glendale’s traffic administrator. The city’s bus fleet comprises 34

vehicles.

Baghdanian defended the cost of the program, saying it would help

build ridership and make the experience of taking the bus more pleasant.

“People don’t like public transit because they think it’s unreliable,”

he said. “But when people know when a bus is coming, they don’t mind

waiting.”