By Teresa A. Martin
Have you ever seen a bus kneel? That’s what the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority calls the technology that lets the new Outer Cape Flex busses dip gracefully low to the ground to enable wheel chair and disabled access.
This week I was Out and About (during on of the few non-soggy parts of the week!) from Orleans to Truro, checking out the new Flex service and learning how technology is part of the busses, their design, and their ability to communicate with us.
Yes, I did just say communicate. These busses do communicate with us, letting us know their whereabouts. Each bus is equipped with GPS, which sends out a locational signal. The signals are recorded and presented via a web interface.
By the time Unwired Village in Orleans is fully up, it will incorporate data from the Flex bus. Not just the usual routes and schedules, but a real time map showing exactly where each bus is. When you view this data atop a Google satellite map, it is something like watching a little toy bus move over a recognizable 3-D play-mat. Except, of course, the bus is real.
People hate to wait for public transportation! Yet with one easy click, you can sip your coffee in Orleans and calculate when to stroll to catch the Flex to head over for a snack in Wellfleet.
The busses are also designed to use one of the current environmentally sound fuel technologies, bio-diesel. Although during this initial launch phase they are running traditional diesel, the National Seashore, which funded the purchase of the 12 new busses, specified that they be able to run bio-diesel and plans are in place to convert them in the near future.
Ah, am I hearing puzzled looks here as I yammer on about ‘the Flex?” Let me provide some non-tech background.
The Flex is a new bus route that runs from Harwich to Truro, connecting to Ptown via a shuttle. It launched June 1. Each bus holds 2 bikes, 25 seated passengers, and 15 standing passengers. It costs $1 to ride and its advocates hope it will carry 42,000 people in its first year of service. It came in on target in the first week, delivering 800 from one destination to another.
These aren’t gritty grim vehicles – on the contrary, they are somewhat like the car rental shuttles at the airport, sort of boxy, bright, light, and featuring colorful comfortable seats. The primo location, IMHO, is the first row of the upper level, which provides a tour perspective of the route and great views of the scenery.
There are multiple audiences that the authority hopes will embrace the busses. The tourists, of course, who can easily avoid congestion and traffic induced stress. Regional students, who have a non-car alternative to move around on. Employers, who can get tax credit for supporting the purchase of passes for their employees. Seniors, who are looking for alternatives to driving. Not to mention anyone who hates being trapped in traffic behind the wheel of paying a small fortune to fill the personal car’s gas tank.
The name, Flex, comes from the service’s interesting ability to deviate from the planned route by as much as 3/4 of a mile based on a telephone request. Anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 hours before your desired pick up time, you can call the Flex and request a special stop. As long as it is within 3/4 of a mile of the route, you’ll be accommodated for a $1 additional fee.
Oddly, this is an area where you’d think electronic communications would make sense – but this interaction can only happen via a phone call. Perhaps ‘develop online reservation process’ is one of those items in the agency’s to-do list!
On the rides I took, the busses held a mix of people. There were two young Europeans vacationing with bikes and guidebooks in tow. There were a group of high school students. There was someone going to work at Stop & Shop and someone else leaving work at Stop & Shop. There were a few people who were checking out the service for future reference.
No matter how much online technology we employ, we’re always going to need to physically move around from point A to point B. The Flex service is an idea whose time has come for the Cape. With constant concern over greenhouse gasses, it makes environmental sense. With gas at more than $3 a gallon, it makes financial sense. With a schedule running every half hour and lots of logical stops, it makes practical sense. Heck, it all adds up to commons sense. And that’s a darn good application of technology!
Become a Member
