The TrackABus Queenstown service, live since 2016, is being relaunched by the Otago Regional Council under the Orbus brand. The media release can be found here – Orbus Queenstown to trial real-time bus tracking
The TrackABus Nelson service has been live since April 2019. Nelson City Council are now promoting the real time service to their passengers – Cool new NBus stuff!
The latest TrackABus service in Whangarei has been launched with the information integrated into the existing CityLink branded web site. Whangarei passengers can now access real time information via the familiar CityLink site with additional developments such as of a smartphone app for the city in the works.
The Queenstown real time service, first introduced in August 2015, was updated to coincide with the launch of the revamped Orbus service – https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/queenstown/2-bus-network-launched.
With the expansion of the service an additional 10 vehicles were required to deliver the more frequent service. TrackABus, working closely with Ritchies staff, installed tracking equipment across the fleet ready for the new service launch.
On a smaller urban service such as Rotorua where buses often drive on quiet semi-rural roads during parts of each trip the update frequency of the GPS tracking is important. If the GPS units do not report frequently enough then passengers waiting may experience the bus ‘jumping’ towards them when using the service. The TrackABus Rotorua service was initially trialled with a 3rd party data feed which was replaced with TrackABus Locator Units to improve the GPS frequency. Once this was done the service was launched and integrated into the Bay Bus web site – Real-time bus tracking in Rotorua
Real time information for the Invercargill BusSmart service went live to the public after a short implementation project that included installing TrackABus GPS equipment on the 8 bus fleet.
As well as being generally available to the public via the TrackABus and TrackABus for Mobile web sites and SMS service was also available. Council customer services staff also used the public interface to quickly answer queries from the public, removing the need to look up paper timetables in order to answer each query.
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