The Florence Area Transport Company (ATAF) serves the Florence area in Italy. Its 480 buses of various sizes, ranging from electric minibuses used in the centre to 18m long jumbo buses, carry 80M passengers per year over 625km of routes with more than 2000 stops. ATAF is applying Project Jupiter (Joint Urban Project in Transport Energy Reduction) in the European Union's Thermie programme, with the aim of achieving a significant shift from private transport to public transport. ATAF has renewed its bus fleet, lowered its bus platforms to make its buses easier for disabled people to use, and introduced a new integrated management system for its fleet. This system has five general requirements and several specific requirements, together with an on-board subsystem for each bus, and subsystems for the operating centre, bus depots, radio telecommunications, and passenger information at bus stops. The centrally controlled information system provides bus stops with information on expected arrival times, route deviations and stop variations. The high-speed radio system can upload data about a bus when it leaves its depot, and download it when it returns for refuelling. Each bus has five radio channels, one for data acquisition from the vehicle, and the other four for voice and precoded messages.
Abstract