Inside Trapeze and Vontas

Recorded live at APTA TRANSform Conference and EXPO, Modaxo SVP Paul Comfort leads a panel with Sabrina Blais of Trapeze and Chris Tuff and Rahmin Azria of CENTRO https://www.centro.org/ talking about Trapeze RISC (Risk, Incident, and Safety Compliance) about implementing RISC and how it's transformed the entire agency

This year at ThinkTransit we did something a little different. Instead of doing the usual PowerPoint product update looking at the state of Trapeze and Vontas products, I led a talk show-style discussion focused on just two products—Trapeze RISC and Vontas OnSite. The premise here was that these two products typified the new product development process being deployed across both companies. Instead...

Recorded live at ThinkTransit in Nashville, TN, April 3rd, 2023, Dr. Karen Philbrick, Executive Director of the Mineta Transportation Institute, giving the Day One keynote address on the challenges, and opportunities, facing public transit today. Dr. Philbrick talked about: Building a stronger, more inclusive, and more resilient workforce by helping spread the word that there are more careers in p...

Dr. Karen Philbrick will kick off ThinkTransit with our Day One Keynote. In this interview, learn about Karen, her passion for transit, her vision for the future of transit, and what we need to do to get there.

Randi and Tris sat down with Paul Comfort, SVP of Modaxo and host of Transit Unplugged to talk about the Executive Summit Paul hosts each year during ThinkTransit. Learn about the event and some of the special sessions and guests he has planned for attendees. Learn more about the Executive Summit and register for the event .

We're kicking off the year with the team from EAM (Enterprise Asset Management), Brett Koenig, Satpal Bamrah, and Bill Boston join me to talk about how to set yourself up for success  this year by focusing on: Reviewing your KPIs Making sure you have all the data you need Taping into EAM workflows Getting prepared for NTD and TAM reporting with State of Good Repair tools Using EAM in your cap...

Randi and I got to experience these awards for the first time last year and it was really inspiring to learn how agencies and people are pushing the boundaries of transit today. As people new to the industry, learning about the passion and drive people have for what they do gave us a real sense that what we do matters . While innovation appeals to the transit geek in me, as a former teacher and sp...

Randi and Tris are back for Season 2 of Destination: ThinkTransit. We're kicking things off this year with ThinkTransit registration, some trivia about Nashville and some memories about ThinkTransits past. Join us in future episodes to learn about the speakers, the agenda, and everything else about ThinkTransit.

In this continuation of the ViewPoint plus series, Esmy Jensen and I talk with Nila Zaman about how ViewPoint helps you harness your mobility on demand data to get a handle on everything going on with your paratransit service. Paratransit is one of the most essential, and expensive, services agencies run. In order to make sure they can meet the demand, and even offer service to more people, agenci...

This is a deep-dive chat with Risk Incident and Safety Compliance (RISC) Product Manager Sabrina Blais. Sabrina talked to me more about why RISC is important now and what she's learned from deploying RISC at pilot and early adopter agencies. You can read more in her post about RISC on the Trapeze Blog-- Everything You Need to Know About Managing Safety at Your Agency with RISC .

In the second part of our series ViewPoint plus, I'm talking with Esmy Jensen and Tyler Dvorak about how better data analysis is critical to creating effective schedules and plans for your agency. You can also read more about this in their blog post on the Trapeze Blog: How to get a grip on your data to create the service you want and your riders need .

In the first in a series of episodes, I'm talking with Esmy Jensen, Solutions Consultant for ViewPoint, about how our advanced data and analytics solution brings out extra insight and value from all Trapeze products. First up is Brett Koenig, Industry Solutions Manager for EAM, back on the show to tell us how ViewPoint helps you make sense of all your asset and maintenance data. EAM generates a ga...

I love trains. I love taking transit by rail whenever I can. Fast, no traffic to deal with (like buses still have to deal with), and just relaxing. I sat down with Marcelo Bravo the Director of Business Development for Rail at Trapeze to talk about his career journey, the future of commuter rail, and how Trapeze software powers and supports some of the biggest rail properties in North America and...

Tyler Dvorak is back on the show to talk planning and scheduling, but this time we're talking planning and scheduling for the next ten to fifteen years. Between now and 2040 public transit is going to switch from mostly diesel and CNG to battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell. This might be the single biggest change to hit transit since we stopped using horses. It's going to take a lot of work to...

Nila Zaman, Industry Solutions Manager for Mobility on Demand for Trapeze, knows a lot about getting people from A to B. In this episode of Inside Trapeze we talk about the mobility demand as an integral part of your community and how what you have running for mobility on demand is just a variation of microtransit. And if you wanted to give your community a full-blown microtransit solution, you pr...

There is no question today’s large organizations—public and private—need ERPs to efficiently manage countless workflows related to employees, finance, and procurement workflows. For years, ERPs have brought tremendous value to organizations by helping them track these key resources with greater accuracy than manual or standalone solutions. But public transit agencies aren’t like other organization...

This is the first in a series of chats with the Vontas leadership team. As a "young-old" company, Vontas is stacked with talent from sister company Trapeze and across the transportation industry. This week we're hearing about Vontas COO Erik Lehmann. Born and raised in Iowa, Erik started his career at Trapeze and became Vontas COO after rising through the product delivery and deployment ranks. A d...

This week I have my first repeat guest on the show, Sabrina Blais! Sabrina is back to talk about the new eBook we worked on for Trapeze RISC (Risk, Incident, and Safety Compliance). We talk about why we wrote the eBook, what you'll learn, and a little more insight into some of the first use cases that shaped the product. You can download the eBook for free from the Trapeze website and if you're in...

Automated Yard Management (YM) is an essential part running your bus depot efficiently. Buses are routed to the right lanes as they pull in. People walk the yard less locating buses and checking their status, because there is an up-to-the-minute map of the yard. Maintenance, planning, and dispatch workflows are automatically triggered saving re-work and errors. But what about the rail yard? Can au...

The public transit industry took it on the chin during the pandemic. Beyond restrictions, reduced service, and drops in ridership, the industry lost hundreds and hundreds of bus operators. Two years on, the industry is trying to get back on its feet but is stymied by a lack of people to drive the buses and trains. Kristi Urich, Product Director for Workforce Management at Trapeze (see the WM solut...

What does mobility planning really mean today? Let's get the answer. Mobility Planning and Scheduling, the MPS product group, encompasses more than just planning or just scheduling. It’s bigger. It’s aspirational. It’s an ethos that moving people from A to B is less about what moves them, and more about getting people to the places that will make their lives better . I sat down with MPS Product Di...

Transit agencies are awash in data. From vehicles to passengers to demographics to everything else, public transit thrives on data. The challenge is there is so much data it can be hard to make heads or tails of it, much less use it to make business decisions.  Garrett Vandendries is the Product Director for Data and Analytics and he talks with Tris about ViewPoint and how it can become your...

Competitive grants are an essential component of every transit agency's funding and budget. Many projects, big and small, capital or not, rely on government grants to make them happen. Joanne Scattolon of Trapeze and Eliot Bacon of Vontas help agencies with their grant applications an offer some advice on how to write better, or even great, grant proposals. Music by Derek K. Miller

Tris Hussey, Producer of Transit Unplugged, and Langdon Kessner of Vontas chat with Vontas Technical Sales Specialist Matt Goedken about service disruptions and Disruption Management. It's a fact that in public transit, things don't always go to plan, but Vontas TransitMaster gives agencies powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use tools to manage disruptions, notify drivers, and communicate with riders...

Tris and sales engineer Satpal Bamrah talk about State of Good Repair (SGR), TAM reports (Transit Asset Management), and Trapeze Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) solutions. This year transit agencies across the U.S. have to submit their TAM reports. These massive reports need to detail every asset at an agency. Satpal explains SGR, TAM, and how EAM helps take the pain out of compiling these repor...