Fewer COTA buses are breaking down thanks to a vehicle intelligence system the transit agency has been using for three years, resulting in fewer long waits for riders.

The system uses onboard sensors to track seemingly minor performance standards such as engine temperature or tire pressure.

COTA’s board of trustees voted last week to renew the contract with Vontas, the Iowa company that provides the intelligence system.

“If we’re seeing temperature on a vehicle starting to increase, even if it hasn’t gotten to a point where it is causing a fault on the vehicle, we can pull it out of service ahead of time, inspect that vehicle, and make a repair or flag it to monitor it before a fault occurs,” said Andy Biesterveld, COTA chief engineering and technical officer.

According to figures provided by the transit agency, the buses now travel longer before experiencing a problem and breakdowns are far less frequent.

“It’s a modernization of our vehicle maintenance process,” Biesterveld said. “It allows us to capture data and make decisions before failures occur.”

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A COTA spokesperson said the system is part of a broader effort to predict when vehicles will need work and fix problems before they result in prolonged wait.

COTA drivers are required to stop if a bus maintenance light comes on, leading to long and frustrating delays.

“We have two performance metrics,” Biesterveld said. “One is the number of road calls, and the other is the mean distance between failures, which is how many miles we are getting between expected breakdowns.

“We’re trying to minimize the number of road calls and maximize the mean distance between failures,” he said. “The last thing you want is a bus waiting on the side of the road while you’ve got a technician coming.”

Road calls dropped 10% this year compared to 2021, and have seen similar decreases in prior years since the agency started using the system, according to COTA’s figures.

The agency is on track to exceed 8,000 miles between unscheduled services this year. By comparison in 2019, buses traveled 4,962 miles between unscheduled services, according to COTA's figures.

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The system also uses data leading up to vehicle failures to better predict when components need to be replaced, Biesterveld said.

“Vehicle intelligence is a broad term to talk about how we collect and utilize data,” he said.

pcooley@dispatch.com

@PatrickACooley

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: COTA maintenance system helps buses break down less frequently