The city has received a $100,000 federal grant to install new technology in all Durango transit buses next year.
The upgrades could include more payment options for customers, automated stop announcements, and automatic passenger counters, said Sarah Dodson, assistant director of transportation, in an email.
“In an age where people can summon Lyft or Uber with a few clicks on their smartphone, we hope to offer a more cost-effective option through public transit that is competitively convenient,” she said.
Currently, passengers must have exact cash or purchase a monthly or annual pass to ride city buses. New options, such as mobile ticketing via smartphones, could reduce wait times for riders and add convenience, she said.
“We are not interested in technology improvements just for the sake of technology, but we are seeking out opportunities to improve ease-of-use and service reliability for Durango Transit riders,” she wrote.
Transit operators use tablets to manually record data about passengers boarding, but during busy times, it can be a challenge for operators to note all of the data with precision and stay on time on their routes, she said.
With real-time, accurate data provided by the new technology, the city will also be able to determine the routes that are the busiest during certain times of day and the most frequented bus stops, she said.
The city can’t track these trends with 100 percent accuracy because the system doesn’t track a passenger from origin to destination, she said. The additional data collection will allow the city to improve the transit system’s efficiency.
The city expects to select a vendor by the end of the year.
The grant requires a $25,000 match, which will be proposed in the 2018 budget.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
