Mott MacDonald helps TfL improve London bus travel reliability

Mott MacDonald has assisted Transport for London (TfL) in the installation of iBus, a new system that uses state-of-the-art Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) technology, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and comprehensive telecommunications across London, to provide the best possible bus service for the capital’s 6.3 million daily bus passengers.

The sophisticated iBus project was born from TfL and London Buses’ policy of improving the quality and reliability of bus travel. Mott MacDonald was directly chosen to play a significant part in the TfL SVD/iBus delivery team, who replaced the outdated loop and beacon system used for both bus priority and passenger information, with a new system that benefits both users and service providers by improving the bus priority at signal controlled junctions using Selective Vehicle Detection systems.

Mott MacDonald’s staff formed a significant part of the SVD/iBus project team, contributing at every stage of the project’s life-cycle from the identification of suitable sites (of which there were approximately 3,000), to updating, amending and testing controller configuration EPROMs, in-station SATs, IC4 configurations and traffic signal controller operations to enable iBus to operate. In addition Mott MacDonald assisted with technical support with iBus commissioning, detailed CAD amendments and checks, through to the final decommissioning of the redundant equipment.

“The completion of the project is the culmination of over two years of hard work, which has resulted in a much improved and enhanced service to public transport users in London”, said Mott MacDonald iBus Project Team Leader Andrew Walsh. “With our help in providing the bulk of the design staff, the project was completed nine months ahead of schedule, under budget and with an additional 464 sites. We’re exceptionally proud of our accomplishment, and look forward to delivering further benefits to TfL in the future.”

Keith Riches, Workgroup Leader for the iBus Project Team said that the Mott MacDonald design staff “proved to be very flexible in their approach, providing a good cross section of resource to support the iBus project.”