Demand for Real-Time Passenger Information Drives Business Forward for NextBus

Dec. 17, 2014
New contract awards include San Francisco Muni, Jacksonville Transit Authority, and State University of New York Purchase College.

NextBus has been awarded three prestigious contracts for its in-demand product suite. Awards include an existing customer contract extension, a new transit agency agreement, and a new university. This achievement further accelerates the company’s rapid growth in bringing innovative solutions to the global transportation market. Overall, the awards total more than $4.3 million. 

NextBus is a subsidiary of San Diego-based Cubic Transportation Systems. Its capabilities are a key component of Cubic’s NextCity strategy for delivering integration and application of payment, traveler information and operational information and analytics to travelers and regional transportation networks around the world.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) has exercised an option with NextBus valued at $ 2 million under a contract awarded in 2013. The contract includes the RTPI system that NextBus hosts for Muni as well as maintaining onboard hardware, bus shelter signs and LCDs in subways.  The original contract included three years of options. In addition to the NextBus contract, SFMTA is a long-time Cubic customer, most recently since implementation of the regional Clipper card system.  

Jacksonville Transportation Authority has awarded a $2 million contract to NextBus to deliver its RTPI system, bus shelter signage and LCDs for displaying arrival predictions. 

The new university customer is the State University of New York Purchase College. The contract is for five years and includes services to support the NextBus system. NextBus technology is in service at more than 40 universities throughout the United States and Canada. 

For transit operators, the NextBus system provides a host of management tools that enable operators to maximize their on-time performance and transit planning. Tools include headway management that track how far apart buses are spaced out, schedule adherence, replay maps that utilize  historical travel data to show dispatcher past vehicle location, and the real-time map interface, which allows transit managers to monitor their vehicles and know if they go off route and see if they’re stationary, early, on-time or late.

“NextBus has a proven track record of success with more than 130 transit agency deployments in the United States, Canada and Australia,” said Ian Newberg, president of NextBus. “As we expand into the international market, we will continue to take the guesswork out of riding public transit for riders and improve performance and planning for operators and also help increase ridership.”