Athey Creek Consultants
Kansas DOT Rural Transit Evaluation – Phase 1 and 2
Athey Creek supported the Kansas DOT in evaluating the needs of transit agencies, benefits received by ITS technologies, and the limitations of existing systems. This evaluation project was performed to help Kansas DOT determine if they should continue to deploy ITS technologies on rural transit systems throughout the state. As part of this project, Athey Creek performed site visits to the two rural transit providers, inventoried the existing systems and met in-person with the dispatchers, managers and drivers. The final report summarized the fact that both transit agencies are benefitting from the ITS technologies, however due to the poor performance and unreliability of the systems deployed, the benefits are not as great as their potential. The recommendation was to correct the technical problems before proceeding with statewide rollout.
As a follow up project to the Kansas Rural ITS Evaluation, Athey Creek was contracted to work closely with dispatchers to understand and document the cause of the many technical issues that were impacting the system. In this separate contract, Athey Creek worked to develop on-line and paper tools to allow dispatchers to log their issues. Athey Creek then met in person with dispatchers to truly understand the challenges. Through this process, the sources of problems were documented and resolved.