Mass Transit At the Show 2023 - 9

S P O N S O RE D B Y
with moving as many vehicles as possible
as quickly and safely as possible, but
that approach has changed dramatically.
An urban transportation network
Miovision:
Keeping Cities Moving
An interview with Miovision Co-Founder and CEO Kurtis
McBride on how technology can provide municipalities
with reliable transit, faster emergency response,
congestion reduction and improved road safety.
Miovision is known for traffic
data and management solutions.
How does that impact transit?
According to the American Public Transit
Association, buses consistently carry
more passengers than any other form of
public transit. Most routes use the same
road network as the rest of vehicle traffic,
so service speed and reliability are
strongly influenced by how well a municipality
manages its traffic network.
Balancing the needs of public transportation
and other road users is an area
of growing interest among our customers.
That's why, back in 2021, we developed
a partnership with Global Traffic
Technologies (GTT), the makers of Opticom,
a leading traffic signal priority
solution that provides a prioritized green
light for emergency and transit vehicles.
We learned through the partnership
that traffic engineers worry about signal
priority's impact on traffic and that the
combination of signal priority and our
smart signal platform can make traffic
better for all stakeholders - whether
that's someone riding a bus to work,
a delivery driver or a parent taking a
carload of kids to soccer practice.
To help cities fully optimize their transportation
networks, we knew we needed
to address the needs of transit agencies.
To that end, we finalized the acquisition
of GTT in April, bringing Opticom and
the team behind it into Miovision.
With this acquisition, what can Miovision
offer to cities, towns and agencies
aiming to optimize public transit?
For most municipalities, public transit,
emergency services and traffic engineering
are all separate agencies that need
to coordinate their efforts to meet the
needs of all stakeholders. That's easier
said than done. We offer a powerful set
of solutions that can help agencies deliver
reliable transit, faster emergency
response, congestion reduction and
improved road safety.
For public transit agencies, we can
provide an effective solution for improving
on-time performance for transit using
the road network (typically buses).
Transit signal priority (TSP) can always
be on to ensure buses consistently arrive
on time or agencies can use TSP only
when buses are delayed, getting them
back on schedule quickly. TSP can improve
service reliability, on-time performance
and help agencies reduce fuel
consumption and brake wear.
How does the addition of transit
optimization to your product portfolio
drive your broader vision?
Miovision's vision is to materially improve
the quality of life for communities
through the optimization of transportation
networks worldwide. A generation
ago many traffic engineers would have
viewed this vision as being synonymous
impacts many aspects of urban life. It
determines how easy your commute
is, how quickly you can get help in an
emergency and even how robust and
dynamic the local economy is.
Balancing all these needs is vital
and municipalities and agencies need
solutions that are easy to deploy and
use. That's why our platform is based
on machine vision and artificial intelligence
to provide the power and the
flexibility to deliver a growing range
of solutions, and we are making our
solutions easier to access. In April, we
launched Miovision One - our transformative
software platform that addresses
current and future global mobility challenges.
We are migrating our existing
solutions to Miovision One, providing
a unified interface for a seamless user
experience. This creates a foundation to
deliver a wide variety of transportation
solutions - a big step towards helping
communities around the world to easily
optimize their entire traffic networks.
Cities and towns are making big
investments in transit. What
opportunities do you think this
presents for urban mobility?
I think the key to success will be improving
transit performance across the
network, not merely adding a shiny new
project amongst existing operations.
Big, new infrastructure projects such
as new subway lines may capture a lot
of attention but to achieve public policy
goals, the entire transit network needs to
improve. TSP can help improve on-time
performance, as well as reduce fuel consumption
and provide vital connections
to the rest of the system.
About the author
Kurtis McBride is chief
executive officer with
Miovision Technologies
Incorporated.
OCTOBER 2023 APTA EXPO ISSUE | MassTransitmag.com 9
http://www.MassTransitmag.com
Mass Transit At the Show 2023

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