Chilean bus company, Subus, has chosen Tait MPT 1327 trunked mobiles to provide the radio communications for its fleet of 700 buses and 40 street operators throughout Santiago city.

The contract will see a combination of Tait mobiles and portables with GPS microphones used on an existing TaitNet MPT 1327 trunked radio system, owned by regional communications provider and Tait dealer – Interexport.

The Tait network was recently upgraded to SITE7 software and expanded from five to six sites to give greater quality of service, manage increased traffic volumes and provide greater coverage across the wider metropolitan area of Santiago.

A feature of critical importance to SUBUS was the implementation of a customised dynamic regrouping service (a Tait Custom Integration development).  This facility allows re-grouping of the entire fleet of buses each day based on SUBUS’s specific bus allocation requirements, via a set of nine Tait Line Dispatcher Terminals. A street operator location service via GPS was also implemented via Tait portables and GPS speaker microphones to ensure SUBUS could track its 40 staff on the ground and ensure greater efficiency of operations.

Background

In February 2007, the Chilean Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunications introduced Transantiago – a complete restructuring of Santiago’s public transport system to replace the previous chaotic system run by thousands of independent bus operators.  Transantiago was essentially developed to modernise and reduce the fleet of around 7,000 ageing buses and to reduce air pollution levels in the city. The system aims to combine local bus lines, main bus lines and the Metro (subway) network.

As part of Transantiago, the Chilean government declared that the number of bus operators throughout Santiago would be reduced from 250 to 10 and regulated by five operators. Similarly the number of buses was to be reduced from 7,000 old buses to 5,000 new ones in order to comply with the project’s fleet quality and environmental demands. The government then accepted bids from potential bus companies interested in becoming one of the five operators part of the restructuring of Latin America’s largest public urban transport system.

One of these companies – SUBUS, was successful in their bid and set about securing a contract with a local communications service provider for the supply of radio communication services for their fleet of 700 buses. “SUBUS chose Interexport’s MPT 1327 trunked service over the competition due largely to its superior city-wide coverage, customised dynamic regrouping facility and street operator location service via GPS.”