Tour of the new maintenance facility of the WRTA

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Bryley’s President, Gavin Livingstone, who currently chairs the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce (WRCC) Ambassadors, arranged for a group of 20 WRCC Ambassadors and staff to tour the new Worcester Regional Transit Authority (WRTA) maintenance facility at 42 Quinsigamond Avenue, Worcester. The tour was conducted by Jim Parker, General Manager of Central Mass Transit Management Inc. (CMTM), which operates and maintains all of the WRTA buses and facilities.

Touring Maintenance Facility

Created in 1974, the WRTA is the second-largest regional transit authority in Massachusetts, servicing Worcester and its surrounding 37 communities. WRTA buses typically run continuously from early morning through midnight (with some holiday exceptions); seven days a week, 365 days a year.

The WRTA’s new, 156,000-square-foot facility is roughly double the size of the original, outdated garage, which was built in 1928 as a trolley barn. The new facility is large enough for 75 transit buses and 30 vans (the current fleet includes 52 buses), and has nine maintenance bays. Buses enter the facility and head to a refueling bay where they can get a wash, repairs, fluid checks and adjustments – even get repainted – before rolling back into service.

Window View from the Upstairs Office

 

The new facility is also home to significant, up-to-date technology, including a WRTA BusTracker app, Track by Text, Track by QR Code, and WRTA-schedule/ tracking Kiosks located throughout the city.

Control Center

All operations run through the sophisticated Control Center, which is continuously manned when buses are on the road.

In 2014, Bryley Systems – the Managed IT provider for CMTM and the WRTA – designed and deployed an IT-infrastructure platform to support the technologies listed above, but with managed redundancies to allow continuous operation. (For details, see “Transportation Company Relies on Bryley Systems to Stabilize Technology Platform and Create Blueprint for the Future” for details.)

Wi-Fi is not Wireless Fidelity

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Garin Livingstone and Gavin Livingstone, Bryley Systems Inc.

Wi-Fi is not an abbreviation for wireless fidelity1; it is a trademarked phrase that refers to wireless communication between electronic devices and a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) based on the IEEE 802.11x standards.

Wi-Fi is brought to us by the Wi-Fi Alliance®, a worldwide network of companies with the mission to drive the adoption and evolution of Wi-Fi globally.  The Wi-Fi Alliance tests and certifies that WLAN equipment meets its stated standards.

Current standards include:

  • 11g
  • 11n
  • 11ag

Speeds have grown substantially, now rocketing up to a potential 1,300Mbps using the latest WiGig™, 802.11ac, standard (although actual performance is typically significantly less than its potential).

wifi-standard

At their core; wireless networks are less secure than wired networks (since a potential intruders does not need a physical connection), although encryption technologies (Wi-Fi Protected Access or WPA and WPA2) exist to secure WLANs.

Large-scale Wi-Fi implementations include:

  • City-wide Wi-Fi – Free Wi-Fi provided in St. Cloud, FL, Sunnyvale, CA, etc.
  • Campus-wide Wi-Fi – Wi-Fi throughout a campus environment

1See ‘Wireless Fidelity’ Debunked by Naomi Graychase of WiFi Planet.

2See Wikipedia IEEE 802.11.