The Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District (AC Transit) announces a substantial contribution to the Open Source Software Initiative. Open Source is a global movement that has gained across-the-board acceptance as an innovative way to produce high-quality software without the enormous cost associated with commercial solutions.
“Historically, transit agencies across the state experience limited information technology resources,” says AC Transit Board President, H. E. Christian Peeples. “We found even when we’re able to allocate precious dollars, commercial software applications either did not exist or were insufficient for the demands of public transit.”
So AC Transit took a bold step, becoming the first California public transit district to develop for the “community.” Our internal efforts started a few years ago, when staff engineers began designing and building a platform of custom software. As the engineers set about meticulously writing code, their primary focus was using common data sets that can be readily shared and used outside AC Transit walls.
AC Transit’s first publicly available application is for Bus Operators and Heavy Duty Coach Mechanics training. Although the software was developed for Operators and Mechanics, the application is written in C# language on the .NET framework. The result is an application nimble and adaptable to the needs of other agencies’ and host of courses including:
- Course management (schedules, employee/non-employees enrollments, class size, attendance, grading and topics);
- Course instructor management;
- Apprenticeship management (work order import, daily review, weekly rating system, supervisor sign-off, and worksheet printout.);
- Pre-built SQL reports (for monitoring attendance, course rosters, completed training, and work order history).
“The Operations and Maintenance application is only the beginning,” says AC Transit General Manager, Michael Hursh. “Our resourceful engineers have developed several applications that will soon be available, without a fee, to public and private transit agencies, vendors, students, and software developers alike. Our goal is to launch an intellectual properties exchange that reduces cost and maximizes value in the transit industry and beyond.”
To minimize any software technical interruptions, AC Transit engaged in beta-testing of our Open Source applications for several months. Beta-testing allowed staff engineers to put our applications into the ‘real world’ for review and feedback. The results have been very favorable. In fact, other transit agencies have expressed keen interest in adopting the Operations and Maintenance application to improve organization and efficiencies for their training staff.
