Partner News: Thetis and Atac sign contract for Beijing Olympics

Date: 05 March 2008

ERTICO Partner set to deliver technology for Beijing bus management during the summer Olympics Games.

ERTICO Partner Thetis, as the lead partner of a JV with Atac, the Rome Mobility Agency, signed a 3.5 million Euro contract with BPT (Beijing Public Transport Holdings), which runs the bus transport for the Chinese capital. The contract is within the framework of the Sino-Italian Cooperation Programme for the Environment, and its scope is the deployment of IBOCS (Intelligent Bus Operations Control System) for the planning and GPS real-time monitoring system of the 32-bus special lines dedicated to spectators’ transport for the Olympic Games.

This project was showcased, together with others managed by Thetis in China and India, during a dedicated event organised on the 26 February at the European Parliament by Paolo Costa, Chairman of the Committee for Transport and Tourism.

The IBOCS is an extension of the bus AVM pilot system developed within the ITS-TAP project (ITS for Traffic Air Pollution mitigation), deployed in Beijing for the Environment Protection Bureau, to manage traffic limitation within the second ring road in case of  high pollution.

IBOCS will extend control from the 200 buses of the pilot project to the over 2000 Olympics dedicated buses expected to be equipped with onboard GPS by BPT.  A new Main Control Room, which Thetis is also providing the architecture design for, will be set up at BPT headquarters to supervise the entire Olympics lines service, while detail bus real-time control will be remotely managed by the 11 individual bus companies.

The delivery includes advanced software applications to plan bus service and optimise bus and personnel resources, as well as the client-server AVM applications, the arrival time forecasts at the stops and the service statistics reporting applications. The architecture takes into account the workload split between BPT Headquarters and the bus companies’ operational duties.

While Thetis is providing the technology, Atac will provide services for the training of BPT staff, capitalising on the experience gained in Rome in public transport management since the 2000 Jubilee, in a capital where large–scale events take place regularly. Long term local technical assistance will also be provided by the new Thetis office in Beijing.

Thetis and Atac have been working together in China since 2002 and are carrying out projects and consultancies in Beijing and Shanghai.

For further information, please visit the Thetis website at www.thetis.it