The Egyptian Ministry of Transport, trusted Ridango’s customer “Mwasalat Misr”, a leading smart urban mass transit operator with years of exemplary operational experience in Cairo, to partner with “SuperJet”, the pioneering intercity coach operating company fully owned by the ministry, to establish a Public Private Partnership Company “ACTA” to run a sustainable bus service in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, and to host to the events of COP27.
The Operations
The service during COP27 ran with 260 Electric and CNG City buses and approximately 2M passenger trips were completed in 2 months.
“ACTA” used Transit Management System (TMS) from Ridango as an operations management system to maintain world-class quality operations through monitored schedules and headway adherences. In addition, RealTime Passenger Information was provided through mobile apps, Google Maps, and social chatbots that fetched accurate real-time arrival predictions (ETAs) from TMS.
Ahmed Elleithy, Commercial VP Mwasalat Misr, commented that it was a logical step to continue with Ridango. ““Mwasalat Misr” has relied on Ridango´s TMS as its operations management system of choice since late 2018 to maintain operational discipline and quality. The team is well trained to use the user-friendly portal and locally developed technologies (driver apps, passenger apps) are already integrated with the solution,” said Elleithy.
TMS gives city bus operators the necessary visualizations and tools to manage operations as well as manoeuvre the buses in real-time to have the best, most reliable service possible. In addition, the accuracy of real-time ETA calculation plays a crucial role in having a better customer experience.
“The fact that Ridango has provided open APIs has enabled us to integrate with multiple RTPI channels such as the official COP app developed by the government of Egypt, Google Maps, screens in stations, and social media chatbots, “commented Ahmed Elleithy.
“Several members and leaders of established organizations such as UITP, Egyptian Ministry of Transport, UN Habitat, and the Egyptian traffic police have expressed their appreciation of how well the operations were managed in Sharm El-Sheikh, “said Elleithy with pride. He added, that Ridango´s technical support and commercial teams have been very responsive and supportive to accommodate changes, updates, questions around the clock. The newly provided JIRA helpdesk is a streamlined communication channel to get swift support”.
