Moving Transport Organizations into the Future [Videos]

Transport agencies are under constant pressure to deliver passengers and goods to their destinations as quickly, safely and comfortable as possible. New technologies open up exciting new possibilities, but how can the transport industry take advantage of the new functions and features on offer, without abandoning tried-and-tested existing equipment? Tait helps transport agencies around the world keep things moving by providing innovative converged voice and data solutions.

For transport organizations, getting passengers and goods from A to B in a timely fashion isn’t enough: they also need to keep staff and passengers safe and adapt to any disruptions quickly to keep cities moving. To enable this, transport agencies need to equip their vehicles and drivers with smart, flexible comms solutions that keep them connected anywhere and anytime.

Tait has over 50 years experience in developing and installing integrated communications systems to improve coverage, service interruption management, and enhanced worker safety for transport organizations across the world. Watch the video and read the stories below to hear from our customers how Tait solutions are helping them to keep drivers and passengers safe and cities moving.

TriMet, Oregon, USA

The Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet) is the sole provider of mass transit for the Portland Metro region of Oregon, U.S.A. When they were told by the Federal Communications Commission to upgrade their dated analog 450 UHF system upgrade, they were looking for a solution that could offer interoperability with related agencies, as well as reliably support and enhance worker safety for employees across their entire network.

After a thorough selection process, TriMet decided an open standards-based P25 trunked system best suited their requirements. The solution they chose is powered by Tait base stations and radios and supplemented with Avtec radio consoles, Xcel communication recorders, and Cobham for bi-directional amplifiers.

Tait was also chosen for our willingness to customize the solution. TriMet’s new system incorporates a Tait custom solution for AVL, called fast polling, which provides high throughput position updates for their public transport fleet, ensuring  that if someone needs help and is unable to tell dispatch where they are, dispatch staff will still be able to locate them quickly.

The new system has also improved safety for bus operators with the silent alarm feature and emergency buttons on the portable radios.

The Tait system is critical to worker safety, and has provided TriMet with very clear and crisp communications.

– A J O’Connor, Manager of Intelligent Transportation Systems at TriMet

Read the full client story here.


Hilton Haulage, New Zealand

Hilton Haulage is one of New Zealand’s leading suppliers of transport and storage facilities, and their trucks cover a large geographic area. They operated on an analog network that could only be used in certain areas of New Zealand, resulting in long periods of radio silence between drivers and dispatch. This impacted logistics coordination, overall situational awareness and was a potential worker safety risk.

Hilton Haulage trucks in yardTo solve these issues, Hilton Haulage opted for a converged comms solution from Tait. Tait Unified Vehicle is a multi-bearer communications hub, offering a high level of connectivity, with access to LMR, cellular and WiFi, and the ability to switch between these.

This allowed Hilton Haulage to keep working on analog simplex channels in their yards, and offered them the ability to switch over to the Tait PTToX service for the wider area communications.

As our business expanded, we needed greater coverage for our communications. With Tait Unified Vehicle, we can now use the cellular network for clear communications through an open channel that covers most of New Zealand.

– Scott Paton, Fleet Maintenance Manager, Hilton Haulage

Tait PTToX uses multiple bearers for communications, enabling Hilton Haulage drivers to stay connected with dispatch in more areas.

Read the full client story here.


Transport for London, United Kingdom

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Transport for London (TfL) needed to add more buses to its fleet to enable passengers to practice social distancing. To make this happen, TfL and Tait had to quickly come up with a solution leveraging the existing Tait Push-To-Talk-over-Cellular solution TfL was using TfL for smartphone communications between staff and the drivers in TfL’s 9,500 buses.

Tait and TfL modified the Tait TeamPTT app to make it suitable for drivers of the 80 external buses that were brought in. The PTToC service provided the external bus drivers with a communications link to TfL’s control center and an emergency line to TfL’s Network Management Control Center.

As the drivers were able to stay connected through their smartphones, there was no need to integrate or install any radio equipment in the external buses.

“To meet the challenge, the project mobilised rapidly. Working closely with our comms partner Tait Communications, we modified our Push To Talk radio service, making it suitable for in-cab use… The Tait TeamPTT app has shown just how flexible it is. It already works well for our On-Street users, and it doesn’t look out of place in the cabs of our extra school buses either”

– Thomas Brewster, Transport for London’s Service Delivery Manager Technology and Data for Surface Transport (Source: LinkedIn)

The innovation, product reliability and quality shown in this project won Transport for London and Tait Communications a prestigious International Critical Communications Awards (ICCA) for “Best Use of Critical Communications in Transport” at the 2020 Critical Communications Week.

Watch Thomas Brewster discuss the award-winning project in the video below:

Read the full client story here.


How Tait Helps Transport Agencies to Keep Moving

Want to hear from our other Transport customers how their Tait solutions are benefiting them? Check out more of our Transport client stories here.

 

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