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The TrueLine™ SaaS Service, a Transit Planning ICT Solution
Issues experienced by customers before the era of TrueLine™
Customers have faced various issues before getting to know TrueLine™, the main issues are described below.
The first issue was the time required for transit scheduling work.
String diagrams, vehicle schedule lists, and many other reports were produced by hand, which took a great amount of time including checking of the data's consistency. Training was also required depending on staff competency, which meant that scheduling could take as long as six months and the optimization of scheduling work was a major challenge.
The second issue was the high threshold to system installation.
The initial installation costs a large amount of money, and necessary system updates during operation after installation are also required.
Because of these unexpected expenses, it is difficult to have sufficient funds to afford the on premise transit scheduling system.
Let us look at the approaches for each of these issues in TrueLine™.
TrueLine™ supports transit scheduling optimization
All transit scheduling systems are similar in that they reduce work time by using computers to perform tasks which were previously done by hand, such as run curve calculation, report exporting, and data checking. However, TrueLine™ does more than these; it also offers better user friendliness with screen designs and operability based on User eXperience Design (UXD). For instance, TrueLine™'s intuitive Graphic User Interface (GUI) helps any staff member, regardless of his or her abilities, produce the desired run curves and optimize work time.
One customer commented that TrueLine™ cuts down simulation run time from half a day to just a few seconds.
Another customer said that significant time used to be required to mutually confirm train and vehicle operation even for small changes because the company frequently shares tracks with other operators, so it is difficult for the company to change timetables on its own. This company highly appraised TrueLine™ because it makes production work more efficient.
Barriers to introduction of a new system
In most cases, both software and hardware are required for introducing a new system or replacing a current one. These expensive installation costs for the overall system are a barrier to the introduction.
In particular, most companies that have continually used the same system for many years, they do not expect to spend so much money. Even if a system offers appealing functions for everyone involved in this work, many companies don't have sufficient budgets to introduce new systems or update.
TrueLine™ offers various measures to solve these issues.
The first is the tremendous reduction of initial costs, one of the major features of TrueLine™ that employs the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Automatic updates are no additional costs and no need for administrators to perform software maintenance or update work.
Specialized systems made from scratch require dedicated equipment and also require the degradation of those equipment after several years passed by. In contrast, TrueLine™--which utilizes cloud computing--offers reasonable monthly fees and can be used on any generic computer. This is a major reason that some customers have selected TrueLine™.
Another big feature of TrueLine™ is its flexibility features, since it can be used only for those portions of services in needed. TrueLine™ has multiple services, so users can choose, and test only their necessary services rather than suddenly replacing the whole system. In this way, they can determine what is needed and expand the services sequentially.
There is also a free trial period, allowing users to perform a benefit-cost analysis and test the product's functionality in the actual environment to see if it is truly useful before commercially installation.
TrueLine™ is Cloud-based Transit Scheduling System using a SaaS model that features a wide range of functions yet easy installation. It is designed as a solution to help all sorts of customers in the transit industry who offer fantastic transit services to society.
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About TrueLine™ Cloud-based Transit Scheduling System
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( Free trial to evaluate TrueLine™ is also available. )