In a bid to ensure that the City’s transport infrastructure and Rea Vaya commuters are at all times safe, the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Control Room is relocating as part of the expansion plans.
The Metro Trading Company (MTC) is spearheading the relocation of the Control Room, which is currently situated in Sauer Streetin the inner-city.
MTC’s field service technician Sipho Phakade explains that the move to relocate the Control Room to its new residence in Selby, is important and forms part of the expansion plans. The entire project is carried by MTC on behalf of BRT.
“The relocation is necessitated by the fact that, the CCTV cameras in BRT stations are linked to the contact centre, so there is a need for proper space for operations,” says Phakade.
From the Control Room, officials are able to monitor all the Rea Vaya buses, the bus stations, routes to check traffic and providing security making it safer for commute
The project is predicted to run until August 2018, MTC will be responsible for the following:
- Building a fibre route to Selby operation contact centre (OCC)
- Physical move of the infrastructure: servers, Racks, workstation, decommission Sauer and commission, Selby.
- Videowall for monitoring purposes
- Internet connection to the MTC cloud.
Sipho Phakade added that, it is important for a control centre to be in order because if a security-related incident may occur such as a breakdown, technicians will make their way to the relevant station, to solve the issue. Traffic lights, incidents and road conditions are monitored.
Control centre adds up to innovations in cases like automatic vehicle locator (GPS) for tracking buses’ and management system for drivers. It also has many advantages as it cut down cost and optimize systems effectiveness:
- There is instant response to changes in customer’s demand
- Instant response to facilities failures, safety, and security issues;
- Automated linkages between operations and revenue distribution;
- Efficiency in customer queries.
The contact centre will be relocated to this area in Selby
