Benefits and Costs

• Decreased passenger late arrivals by 21%.
• Improved on-time bus performance by 9%-23% in large cities.
• Reduced incident-response time by up to 50%.
• Possible savings include:
  • Reduced data-collection costs (Atlanta's MARTA reports saving $40,000 per year).
  • Decreased labor costs for schedule checkers.
  • Fleet reductions of 2%-5%, especially with CAD (Kansas City saved $1.6 million).

Price
Costs for onboard GPS equipment ranges from $500 to $2,000 per vehicle. Total implementation costs per vehicle can reach $15,000, with median per vehicle cost estimated at $8,000. Atlanta paid $27,000 per vehicle with CAD integration.

A stand-alone AVL system cost a small rural agency in Iowa $80,000, whereas Baltimore paid close to $8 million for its implementation.

A small agency paid $60,000 for a 12-vehicle deployment of AVL linked to traveler information, while a large urban agency incurred a cost of $70 million to equip 5,700 buses. The median AVL system deployment cost is in the $200,000 range.

Operations and Maintenance (O&M)
O&M costs for onboard equipment average 2% of the original capital cost.

• Recurring costs can include telecom service fees.
• Capital costs ranged from $10,000 to $50,000 per dispatch center in 1999.

Training
Expect an eight-hour day per driver and dispatcher for AVL and Mobile Data Terminal (MDT) implementation.