Fayetteville Police and Fire Departments and Fayetteville Area System of Transit (FAST)
Three time winner of the prestigious All-American City Award, Fayetteville, North Carolina is no stranger to community collaboration. When it came time to choose a technology solution to improve operations for their fleet of city vehicles, Fayetteville decided to find one solution that would meet the needs of all their fleets, including the Fayetteville Area System of Transit (FAST) and the police and fire departments.
Challenges
The City of Fayetteville had a variety of challenges that needed to be resolved with their new technology system. In the event of an emergency, the fire department, as the city’s first responders, wanted to be able to send the next available or closest unit to the scene to improve response times. The police department was looking to improve safety and visibility for their officers. On the transit side, FAST wanted to provide better customer service, and improve routing and scheduling to minimize overtime hours.
Solution
The City of Fayetteville chose AssetWorks to provide a comprehensive technology solution for their diverse fleet. Streets CAD/AVL solution is installed in the office and communicates with Ranger rugged in-vehicle computers in the buses to manage FAST’s fixed-route fleet. For the paratransit operation, AssetWorks provided a custom integration between Ranger and Trapeze Novus routing and scheduling software. The Public Safety fleet uses BBX Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) devices in the vehicles, which collect and send GPS data to Streets and, via emergency responders’ laptops, to the OSSI Public Safety Software in the dispatch office.
End Result
“The system has made the biggest difference in reducing overtime and increasing employee efficiency,” explains Melissa Coleman, IT Project Manager for the City of Fayetteville. “We can schedule to reduce overtime and dispatch knows when someone has been picked up or not, so they can respond instantly. For the emergency responders, we are able to send the closest unit available to save on routing and reduce response time minutes. It’s all about cutting down on arrival times.”
Return on Investment
- Reduced overtime hours
- Faster response times
- Improved routing and scheduling
- Increased operational transparency
- Better complaint resolution and customer service
Client View
On the public safety side, the fire department’s goal was to send the next available or closest vehicle to a call to shorten response times. The police department wanted to keep officers safer by always knowing their whereabouts, and both departments needed to see the locations of all police and fire vehicles for use in emergency situations, such as calls for backup.
Looking for a vendor who could provide an all-in-one solution for all departments, the City of Fayetteville chose AssetWorks because of their diverse product offerings.
Melissa Coleman, IT Project Manager for the City of Fayetteville explains, “AssetWorks could provide a scalable enterprise solution, not just a transit system, and they could do it all. It was also important that the solution be able to expand to other vehicles and departments in the future.”
Streets® Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) and Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) software suite was chosen for the fixed route transit operation. Streets is integrated with Ranger® MDTs in the buses, to provide dispatch with real-time location and status information and to help bus operators stay on-time.
“Our complaint resolution is much better now,” explains Tony Means, Transit Operations Superintendent. “I love that I can go to the history and see if there were any vehicles in the area and what their speed was. I feel very confident now that the information I have is accurate, and I can even take a screenshot of the history and show the customer where the vehicle was.”
The public safety fleet, which includes 125 police vehicles and 60 fire trucks, was outfitted with BBX vehicle tracking devices which provide real-time location information to Streets and OSSI Public Safety Software in the dispatch office. Using the vehicle tracking functionality, “we are able to send the closest unit available to save on routing and cut down on response time,” says Melissa.
With Streets, Fayetteville staff can see the locations of all the city vehicles—transit, fire and police—on one map. “Dispatchers love the system because they appreciate being able to see all the vehicles and know where everything is,” says Melissa.
Looking to the future, the City of Fayetteville will be leveraging their initial investment to expand the AVL system to the Engineering, Development Services (code and zoning inspectors), and Parks and Recreation departments.
Melissa explains, “Right now, for example we don’t know where an inspector is, how long it takes to go from job to job, or how long each job takes. It’s all about getting the time-stamped job data and knowing where our people are throughout the day.”
