Warwickshire County Council (WCC) identified a requirement for improved roadside publicity displays, in particular in the rural areas of the county.

Many bus stop displays were outdated and hindered the passenger journey, especially for passengers who do not have access to the internet and rely on the bus stop displays.

Previously, the council used generic design software that was not built specifically for the bus sector, which made updating timetable displays a manual and time-consuming process.

With approximately 4,000 bus stops across Warwickshire, they required an efficient and flexible, user-focused solution to assist with timetable production for roadside publicity displays of varying sizes and formats.

Key areas of features included the following:

• The ability to create and maintain complex timetables
• Mapping capability that would enable them to efficiently create a visual perspective of bus routes and the bus stop network
• Easier management and maintenance of bus stop assets

Minimum 99.9% uptime

Following a comprehensive tendering process, the Omnibus cloud-based scheduling suite was implemented. It includes OmniSTOPdesign, the sophisticated roadside publicity solution, as well as timetabling, mapping, roadside asset management and data-sharing software, which together improve the overall efficiency of WCC’s planning and publicity team.

A key requirement was that the solution offers a minimum 99.9% availability (uptime) during office hours (measured over a monthly basis) and is well supported by a reliable and knowledgeable support team.

Other key benefits that impressed WCC included:

• The flexibility of OmniSTOPdesign and having the ability to set up their own templates for bus stop displays
• Having the capability to easily update timetable data in OmniTIMES and import the data directly into OmniSTOPdesign
• The integration between the products to further improve efficiency and streamline processes
• Having a cloud-based system to maximise accessibility from various locations
• The ongoing customer service support clients receive from Omnibus after implementation

Saving resource time

Since implementation, WCC has saved valuable resource time and reduced the manual entry of data, and product integration has improved efficiency across the team. Most importantly, they have received positive feedback from passengers on their new roadside publicity displays.

“Customer feedback was sought after the introduction of the solution, and the findings were overwhelmingly positive. We can now confidently say that passengers find the roadside timetable displays easy to read and understand and that the information is up to date, which is really important for those customers without access to the internet.”

– Derek Riley, Passenger Transport Officer