M E M O / N O T E D E S E R V I C E

To / Destinataire	Chair and Members of Transit Committee/ Président et membres du Comité des services de transport en commun	File/N° de fichier: ACS2010-ICS-TRA-0003-IPD
From / Expéditeur	Alain Mercier, General Manager/Directeur général, Transit Services/Services du transport en commun	Contact/Personne ressource: Jane Wright, Manager/Gestionnaire, Safety, Training and Business Service/ Sécurité, Formation et Services 613-842-3636 x2126 Jane.Wright@ottawa.ca
Subject / Objet	Update: Bill 118/ Projet de loi 118 : Mise à jour	Date : 14 April 2010 Le 14 avril 2010

On April 23, 2009, the Provincial government passed into law Bill 118, an amendment to the Highway Traffic Act, which came into effect October 2009. Bill 118 prohibits the use of display screens on motorized vehicles while in motion unless they are used for specific purposes, such as navigational capability, as defined by the new law.

In relation to transit buses, public transit authorities in Ontario received a three-year grace period to comply, which sets the deadline for the City of Ottawa to achieve compliance by April 2012.

Currently, OC Transpo buses are equipped with one interactive display screen: the mobile data terminal (MDT) display, which is used to monitor schedule adherence. The scheduled implementation of the next stop announcement (NSAS) and Presto smartcard system will add a second operator display. Neither the MDT or the new operator display currently complies with Bill 118.

Therefore, in order to comply with the law, Transit Services will introduce navigational capability on its buses and integrate the existing operational functions on a single display from the current MDT to the new operator display. Transit Services will invest $4.0M from the existing bus refurbishment account to complete this work. This account is established each year to deal with the replacement of worn, end of life-cycle and obsolete components of the bus, and funding is sufficient to cover the cost of implementing Bill 118.

As previously communicated to Council in Fall 2009, the open architecture provided by the new equipment will ease the integration of the different software applications while allowing Transit Services to efficiently deal with the MDT’s obsolescence.

These concurrent integrations are planned to minimize resources and maximize efficiencies. The implementation of the NSAS (starting August 2010), when combined with the development of the Ottawa Presto smartcard implementation for 2011, allows Transit Services to avoid the renewal cost of the obsolete MDT, while concurrently rendering the transit bus fleet compliant with Bill 118.

A Request For Qualification (RFQ) has been issued to identify potential candidates to conduct the necessary integration work with a Request For Proposal (RFP) to follow in May. Procurement and integration work will take 18 to 24 months to complete.

Alain Mercier