The Los Alamos County Transportation Division and the North Central Regional Transit Department have both been awarded Federal Transit Administration grants to move forward with the purchase of Computer Aided Dispatch and Automatic Vehicle Location software.
AVL is a GPS system that tracks the location of every bus. Information such as transfers and bus location is transmitted to the CAD software at the dispatch center. The CAD system tracks all routes and alerts drivers of transfers and other important information via the computer terminal on the bus.
The transportation division received $50,000 from an FY2013 Rural Transit Program capital projects grant that will be applied to the purchase of the system. The Rural Transit grant is the largest transportation grant the county receives on an annual basis. This year’s grant will be added to $190,000 rolled over from FY 2012 for a total of $240,000.
The county is partnering with NCRTD to purchase the system, which should significantly reduce the cost of the system for both NCRTD and the county. NCRTD has received $242,000 from the FTA for the FY2012 Veterans Transportation and Community Living Initiative Grants.