This paper describes the Integrated Information System which has been recently realised in the case of the city of Trieste in Italy. It outlines many of the tasks which can be very useful in order to improve the level of service with reference to the public transport network and service. In particular one of its aims is to perform public transport network monitoring and control in order to achieve high quality standards. This monitoring system is integrated with user information systems, in order to improve the knowledge and the attractiveness of the transit network and, with the bus priority speed in signalised intersections, to reduce the delays and to improve the commercial speed. This system is characterised by some innovative aspects both from a technological and methodological point of view. In particular the paper describes the aspects dealing with the bus localisation system, which uses an event driven technique instead of a traditional polling approach, the bus priority scheme, which is based on virtual loops concepts, and the digital radio communication system. Moreover, as regards some aspects of dealing with the implementation of the data base of the central control site, the paper describes the system architecture which is based on the logical scheme of Transmodel, which has been developed in some European projects such as EUROBUS and TITAN. The real application in the case of the city of Trieste is also briefly discussed.
Abstract