Boca Raton, FL – July 2017 — In a tourist town, novel means of transportation generate the biggest crowds seeking to get from point A to B. In Coral Gables, Florida, the trolley fits that description to a tee. With a growing user-base demanding the latest and greatest travel experience, Coral Gables found itself pressured to keep up with demand.
“The train and trolley business is familiar territory to us,” notes ETA Transit President John Maglio. “Our roots are in rail, so when Coral Gables came to us and asked how to improve the rider experience it was a pretty straightforward conversation. Improvements to traveler information systems, such as responsive public websites and apps to reach tourists and locals alike would have an immediate impact.”
The original scope of the project outfit 11 trolleys with ETA’s flagship system, the SPOT® ITS. The system’s open-architecture platform proved to be an excellent foundation for providing modern cloud-based administration and system management tools. Adds Maglio, “the beauty of SPOT is its simplicity. It’s simple for passengers to use. It’s simple for administrators to manage. And perhaps most importantly, it’s a simple way for transit agencies to future-proof their operations through the addition of new features and capabilities without incurring new substantial deployment costs.
With Coral Gables adding more streetcars to its service in 2017, it’s apparent that the word on the street is that the improved experience for passengers was the right answer.