Long
Beach transit stops gets smart
By
Erika Jones
Online Forty-Niner
Assistant Photo Editor
The Long Beach Transit installed 15 TranSmart signs — solar-powered electronic
signs that display bus arrivals at real-time — in adition to the 13 already
in operation.
Long Beach Transit has a service area of 98 square miles in Long Beach and
surrounding cities like Lakewood, Cerritos, Bellflower, Signal Hill and Seal
Beach. Students at Cal State Long Beach and other local riders will benefit
from its accessibility and real time.
Out of the 15 new signs recently added, the TranSmart signs closest to campus
are located on Seventh Street at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Bellflower
Boulevard and Stearns Street, and at Palo Verde Avenue and Spring Street, among
other locations. The signs are also displayed at each shelter along the Long
Beach Transit Mall on First Street downtown.
Talks are currently underway to install another TranSmart sign on campus at
the bus stop by the University Student Union turnaround in front of Brotman
Hall, but approval is still pending.
One benefit is that riders will no longer risk being hit by a car by stepping
into the streets to see if the bus is coming. Riders will know exactly how
long it will take for the next bus to arrive in real-time.
|“There’s a comfort level of knowing when your bus is going to
be there,” said Carri Sabel, manager of the Long Beach Transit Station. “I
think it’s a tremendous benefit to a lot of people.”
The TranSmart signs were first installed as a pilot sign on Anaheim Street
in 2002 and went live in 2003. The signs were equipped with LED displays with
21-inch monitors that adjust brightness to outdoor conditions to improve visibility.
The TranSmart sign is a two-line sign with the ability to display up to four
lines of information; the top line displaying current time, while the route
number and scheduled arrival times are displayed on the bottom line. The sign
counts down as the bus arrival time approaches at each location.
Bus arrival times displayed on TranSmart signs can also be accessed on the
Internet. This allows users to access bus tracking by typing in the location
and route number to obtain arrival times at different locations.
“
We’re expanding real-time information we provide to our customers,” Sabel
said.
The sign installation costs approximately $15,000 per location, but the costs
are not passed onto the riders because the project is federally funded. The
cost covers signs, solar panels, poles to mount the signs, installation costs
and labor.
The signs are only the beginning of a seamless, rider-friendly bus travel experience
that
Long Beach Transit strives to provide. According to Sabel, Long Beach Transit
plans to install electronic fare boxes that accept
“
Smart cards,” a swipe card that stores customer information, similar
to an ATM card, to be used as a method of payment in the near future. Customer
information stored on Smart cards indicates the type of fee the customer will
pay, such as disabled fare or student fare.
“
We don’t have it now, but it’s our goal to have it county-wide
in the future,”Sabel said.
The United Fare System Group also plans to have the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s
Long Beach buses incorporate the same payment method as the Blueline and the
LA Metro, so customers can use the same pass to travel on all three transportation
systems.
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