Inside Trapeze and Vontas

This year at ThinkTransit we did something a little different. Instead of doing the usual PowerPoint product update looking at the state of Trapeze and Vontas products, I led a talk show-style discussion focused on just two products—Trapeze RISC and Vontas OnSite.

The premise here was that these two products typified the new product development process being deployed across both companies. Instead of either delivering an exactly proscribed solution outlined in an RFP or creating something in relative isolation from the customer, both teams took to the approach of understanding the problem, proposing solutions, and then developing the product a piece at a time.

This process based on the Agile Product Development Framework, doesn’t presume what the problem is or how to solve it until working with customers and the people who will use the product first.

In this 45 minute discussion, you’ll learn how Trapeze RISC (Risk, Incident, and Safety Compliance) didn’t start out anything like it is today and Vontas OnSite came from turning an RFP on its head and trying something completely new and revolutionary. Listen to the whole discussion here or on your favorite podcast app.

Recorded live at ThinkTransit in Nashville, TN, April 3rd, 2023, Dr. Karen Philbrick, Executive Director of the Mineta Transportation Institute, giving the Day One keynote address on the challenges, and opportunities, facing public transit today.

Dr. Philbrick talked about:

• Building a stronger, more inclusive, and more resilient workforce by helping spread the word that there are more careers in public transit than drivers and mechanics
• Taking care of ourselves. Being mindful of our own mental health and overall health
• Facing the challenges of ridership and the new three-day cities by modeling what we want transit to be...and making it happen.

Included in this episode is the Q&A after her address where she dives even deeper into workforce, equality, and making transit work for everyone.

Dr. Karen Philbrick will kick off ThinkTransit with our Day One Keynote. In this interview, learn about Karen, her passion for transit, her vision for the future of transit, and what we need to do to get there.

We're kicking off the year with the team from EAM (Enterprise Asset Management), Brett Koenig, Satpal Bamrah, and Bill Boston join me to talk about how to set yourself up for success  this year by focusing on:

• Reviewing your KPIs
• Making sure you have all the data you need
• Taping into EAM workflows
• Getting prepared for NTD and TAM reporting with State of Good Repair tools
• Using EAM in your capital planning and grant writing process

Listen in and enjoy!

Randi and Tris are back for Season 2 of Destination: ThinkTransit. We're kicking things off this year with ThinkTransit registration, some trivia about Nashville and some memories about ThinkTransits past. Join us in future episodes to learn about the speakers, the agenda, and everything else about ThinkTransit.

In the first in a series of episodes, I'm talking with Esmy Jensen, Solutions Consultant for ViewPoint, about how our advanced data and analytics solution brings out extra insight and value from all Trapeze products.

First up is Brett Koenig, Industry Solutions Manager for EAM, back on the show to tell us how ViewPoint helps you make sense of all your asset and maintenance data. EAM generates a gathers a ton of valuable information about your agency, but how are you going to learn from that data? ViewPoint is the 1+1=3 solution that lets you ask the questions that let you make decisions and power business transformation.

Read more in the companion blog post by Esmy and Brett on the Trapeze Blog.

Over the next several weeks we'll also be talking about how Mobility on Demand and Mobility Planning & Scheduling work with ViewPoint for more 1+1=3 examples.

Tyler Dvorak is back on the show to talk planning and scheduling, but this time we're talking planning and scheduling for the next ten to fifteen years. Between now and 2040 public transit is going to switch from mostly diesel and CNG to battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell. This might be the single biggest change to hit transit since we stopped using horses.

It's going to take a lot of work to get ready for the switch and during the transition--probably most especially during the transition while an agency might have two or three types of vehicles in service.

Join Tyler and me for a discussion about all the facets of planning agencies will need to think and maybe some new ones like environmental justice and equity.

All this on Inside Trapeze.

Nila Zaman, Industry Solutions Manager for Mobility on Demand for Trapeze, knows a lot about getting people from A to B. In this episode of Inside Trapeze we talk about the mobility demand as an integral part of your community and how what you have running for mobility on demand is just a variation of microtransit.

And if you wanted to give your community a full-blown microtransit solution, you probably have everything you need right at your fingertips.

Learn how it's done and what you need to do to get started.

Automated Yard Management (YM) is an essential part running your bus depot efficiently. Buses are routed to the right lanes as they pull in. People walk the yard less locating buses and checking their status, because there is an up-to-the-minute map of the yard. Maintenance, planning, and dispatch workflows are automatically triggered saving re-work and errors.

But what about the rail yard? Can automated Yard Management make keeping the trains running on time easier and safer?

I chat with Hans Habenicht about Yard Management for Rail and how it's making rail yards more efficient and safer places to work.

Music by Derek K. Miller

Transit agencies are awash in data. From vehicles to passengers to demographics to everything else, public transit thrives on data. The challenge is there is so much data it can be hard to make heads or tails of it, much less use it to make business decisions. 

Garrett Vandendries is the Product Director for Data and Analytics and he talks with Tris about ViewPoint and how it can become your agency's operations nerve center. Built on 30 years of transit data experience, ViewPoint gives you easy tools to answer your more important questions.

Competitive grants are an essential component of every transit agency's funding and budget. Many projects, big and small, capital or not, rely on government grants to make them happen.

Joanne Scattolon of Trapeze and Eliot Bacon of Vontas help agencies with their grant applications an offer some advice on how to write better, or even great, grant proposals.

Music by Derek K. Miller

Tris Hussey, Producer of Transit Unplugged, and Langdon Kessner of Vontas chat with Vontas Technical Sales Specialist Matt Goedken about service disruptions and Disruption Management. It's a fact that in public transit, things don't always go to plan, but Vontas TransitMaster gives agencies powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use tools to manage disruptions, notify drivers, and communicate with riders almost like magic.

Music by Derek K. Miller

Tris and sales engineer Satpal Bamrah talk about State of Good Repair (SGR), TAM reports (Transit Asset Management), and Trapeze Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) solutions. This year transit agencies across the U.S. have to submit their TAM reports. These massive reports need to detail every asset at an agency.

Satpal explains SGR, TAM, and how EAM helps take the pain out of compiling these reports.

Music by Derek K. Miller

So what's the deal here? It all started with talking with the keynote speakers for ThinkTransit and how to share more about what we do with you.

Music by Derek K. Miller.