uTrackArticleCBW

SUPPLIER PROFILE / UTRACK
On the
right
track
Hot on the heels of the firm’s
launch with megabus, Peter
Jackson learns more about
uTrack and how it’s helping take
operators’ customer experience
to the next level
M
aybe you’ve heard of uTrack
– they work with some of the
UK and USA’s largest
operators, after all – but if
you haven’t, you’ll have certainly benefited
from the company’s work if you’ve ever ridden
on a National Express or, more recently,
megabus coach. That’s because uTrack’s highly
advanced, data-driven systems are the unsung
operational heroes of a growing number of
well-known operators, and work around the
clock to ensure passengers arrive on time.
Founded by engineers Eamonn Hughes – the
company’s CEO – and Chief Technical Officer
Conor Gildea, uTrack pioneered real-time
tracking technology in the coach and bus
industry when it launched its first system back
in 2010. “We built a solution for a company in
Ireland, Dublin Coach, which was founded by
the guy who originally setup Aircoach, John
20 / CBW / 26 January, 2021 www.cbwmagazine.com

O’Sullivan,” Eamonn recalled.
“John came to us having heard we were
creating tech for private coach operators, and
asked if we could come up with a solution for
him. We came up with a real-time information
system that made use of their existing WiFi and
GPS systems to provide a real-time feed, and
designed an app for passengers.
“We brought the likes of National Express
Coach over to see what the system looked like,
and they thought it was interesting for a smaller
operator but didn’t think it would scale up to
an operator of their size. They were still willing
to give it a go though, so we did a pilot which
worked pretty well, and they ended up rolling it
out across their business.
“At that point, we pitched a whole new vision
for them. We were surprised how they didn’t
really have effective tracking to know what their
operators were doing, and although they had
real-time information for their customers, the
departure boards were static and staff didn’t
know what was going on… it was a bit of a mess.
So from 2011 onwards we started developing
solutions with them, and started working with
other bus companies to enhance our products
and services.”
We came up with a real-time
information system that made
use of their existing WiFi and GPS
systems to provide a real-time feed,
and designed an app for passengers
Going global
2014 was a breakthrough year for the Dublinbased
firm: “That year,” Eamonn continued,
“we started working with Greyhound Bus in
the US – our first international customer –
and continued to bring in new technologies.
We’ve made a lot of enhancements to our
product since we started out, not just for
real-time information and punctuality but
things like integrating our system into the
booking process, understanding how people
are travelling, understanding the impact of
delays on connections, and basically building a
system that will work and scale for operations
of different sizes in different parts of the world.
“In 2016, we started working in the school bus
market in a big way; our biggest deployment
is with First Student, which has 45,000 school
buses using uTrack making 5.5m student
journeys every weekday, from the east to the
west coast and even in Canada.
“We then began working in the urban bus
market with First Bus in the UK in 2017, tracking
KPIs and a range of data so that the group
could know what was going on across all of
their OpCos and depots. It became a one-stop
source of information for them, with everything
available in real-time to reveal patterns and
trends. It allowed them to benchmark their
different OpCos and see where they were
struggling and things like that. The system can
make suggested timetable improvements as well
based on all the data.”
Today, its offering comprises three products:
Origin, Rygo and Unity. Origin is, as the name
would suggest, the foundation of uTrack – the
back-office operational system that we’ve been
learning about so far. Rygo, the company’s
newest product, is a tracking and route
planning app aimed primarily at passengers,
although it’s also been used by operators and
schools. Besides displaying the location of a
vehicle in real-time and predicting an ETA for
each journey, Rygo tracks passenger numbers
– particularly handy during Covid – and allows
passengers to purchase digital tickets.
Last but not least is Unity, a mobile app
designed for front-line staff. Eamonn explained
the story behind its development: “We began
to realise that one of the biggest linchpins for
performance was the driver, so we asked, ‘How
could we improve the driver’s life and give them
everything they need in their phone?’ The idea
was to create an app that was so useful that
a driver would want to install it on their own
personal device. The result was Unity. Again,
we started off with FirstGroup, and deployed it
across all their different divisions.
www.cbwmagazine.com 26 January, 2021 / CBW /21

SUPPLIER PROFILE / UTRACK
The tracking app has provided
a raft of benefits for megabus’
staff and customers
“We’ve added in features and functionality
that’s very transport-specific; there are lots of
companies out there doing employee apps,
but not ones that have deep integration with
systems that a lot of our clients will use –
like Trapeze’s driver allocation software for
example. We’ve integrated the app with that,
and enhanced it further to make it a better
experience for drivers. It makes a driver’s life
a lot easier, and we’ve since deployed it at Go-
Ahead and other operators.”
With rising demand came a need for
expansion, and two years ago uTrack took
another big step: “By 2019 we were expanding
our team in the UK, and opened our
Birmingham office,” Eamonn said. “We were
due to open an office in Boston last year, but
that has now been pushed back to this year.”
One-stop shop
“Part of our approach is to be hardware and
software agnostic,” said Eamonn. “That means
we can turn up to any operator and, if they’ve
got a network like megabus have with different
operators with different kit in their vehicles,
we can hook all those systems together. That
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SUPPLIER PROFILE / UTRACK
gives operators a level of flexibility that other
systems wouldn’t, and from a cost perspective,
allows them to leverage the investments
they’ve already made in different technology
instead of starting from scratch.
“One of the things we’ve done with megabus is
say, ‘You’ve got Icomera, you’ve got GreenRoad,
we can feed all that data into our platform
to provide you with a really nice tool to track
all your vehicles and understand punctuality
and reliability, plus we can also expose that
information to your customers.’
“That’s what we’ve done with Coach Tracker;
we’ve provided that system for megabus, and
it has their branding. Using the app, you can
search for your journey based on where it’s
going from and to or even using your ticket
number and email address. If you use the
second method, the app will list the trips
associated with your email address, and you can
track them all in real-time.
“It’s quite a nice solution for megabus and it’s
something that, hopefully over the next year,
we’ll expand and improve upon. When you
buy a ticket from megabus, you get an email
confirmation. One of the things we’re looking
to do is to put a link in that email to encourage
passengers to use the tracking system.
“Once we got the green light from megabus,
we were able to get the system up and
running pretty quickly. When we were given
access to all the data feeds, we had the
system running in about a week, although
the public-facing aspects like Coach Tracker
took a little longer as we had to test them
thoroughly. But in comparison to most IT
projects, it was very rapid.
“Our system doesn’t just provide real-time
information, which for a coach service is quite
complicated in itself. We also take in data from
the highways agencies, traffic collisions and
road conditions, and feed all of that into our
system. It will then flag up services that are
potentially going to be affected by those external
factors. That information can then be shared
internally, or it can be sent to customers in what
we call alerts; it’s quite nice because not only
does it tell them there could be a delay, it tells
them the reason for it.
“All of the data is used to help us continually
refine our algorithms, so we can better predict
patterns and trends for every section of road
in the UK. We also look at things from a driver
perspective too, so we can determine whether
it’s a case of the drivers not adhering to the
schedule or the schedule itself being unrealistic.
It gives operators a bit more insight into whether
they have a scheduling issue or a training issue
– often it’s a little bit of both.” //
megabus says the system
is helping make its services
more accessible than ever
megabus refreshed its
coach livery late last
year. RICHARD SHARMAN
24 / CBW / 26 January, 2021 www.cbwmagazine.com

SUPPLIER PROFILE / UTRACK
The operator’s view
Towards the tail end of 2020, megabus
rolled out uTrack’s trio of systems across
its entire operation. Just how helpful have
they proven to be thus far?
Tony Simmons, Operations Director,
megabus: “The system is able to offer us so
much. In terms of punctuality reports, we can
see if there are any ongoing issues on a regular
basis, and all of the information feeds straight
into our customer service centre. When it
comes to dealing with a passenger enquiry
(either on the day or historical), the uTrack
system feeds in all the Highways England
data and it’s stored for future reference; if
we have a query about an incident that took
place a week ago for example, the customer
services team can see there was a road closure
on the M6 at the time and explain that to the
customer. So we’re able to inform passengers
a lot more quickly and easily, both in real-time
and when it comes to historical data.
“We work with a number of operators, and
the fact that we can feed uTrack into various
different tracking systems is absolutely
great. Whilst most of our own fleet is
operating through the GreenRoad system,
some people use different systems; uTrack
allows us to link everybody together into
one system. Our control room uses it on a
frequent basis; it’s on all the time in there
for them to see what’s going on across the
network. It’s great for them because you
don’t have to go hunting through the system
to find problems – things change colour
on the screen to alert you to issues. From a
controller’s perspective, having to monitor
high numbers of vehicles, it allows them to
be proactive and know straight away where
the problems are rather than having to wait
for them to be reported manually.
“The guys on the ground – customer service
staff, duty controllers and so on – can access
the system as well. Again, they’ve got all of
the information at their fingertips, so it’s really
quick and easy for them to use.
“It has the timetables stored too, and it will
look at them and give recommendations for
timetable changes. We can then investigate
that further to see whether it’s because of a
set of roadworks that are going to last three
weeks – and so no changes are needed – or if
it’s something more ongoing.”
Mark Venables, Managing Director,
megabus: “It’s difficult to compare data
now to before we had uTrack, because we’ve
launched during the Covid crisis. Our instincts
say however that we have a much better
response time to customers when they ask us
questions, and we have far fewer questions
because so much information is available to
customers now. We’ve given it a big push and
tried to tell as many customers as possible.
“On the customer side, what’s really
important if we’re truly going to achieve
modal shift – which is very easy to say but
much harder to achieve in reality – is that we
have to make public transport as attractive
as possible. This is fundamental to that. I
think that a lot of people have sustainability
far higher up in their hierarchy of personal
needs than they used to, and that’s going to
stay with us beyond Covid without a doubt.
It’s very easy to say that you intend to do
something different as a customer, but our
job I think is to adopt technologies like this
to truly allow people to have a much better
experience end-to-end.
“Our goal is to make transport as accessible
as possible, and with uTrack you can
genuinely go and have a coffee and watch
your vehicle on a mobile device, knowing
exactly how long you have left to finish your
coffee and chat to whoever you’re with. That
kind of experience – making time useful for
customers – is how we will persuade people to
use public transport more and get out of cars.
“Time in your car is dead – when you’re
driving, you can’t do anything else with it.
What uTrack does is definitely a step-change
in the customer experience. It’s something
that other modes have done, and that’s why it
was so important to us that we did the same.”
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