[RTC Case Study] Transforming Public Transit Safety with GPS Solutions

About RTC

As the transit agency for a large metropolitan area, safety is of paramount importance to the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada (RTC). As it states on its website: “Ensuring the safety of our riders isn’t just a goal, it’s our unwavering mission.”

The RTC provides more than 50 million trips annually on 400 buses for local residents and the throngs of visitors to the greater Las Vegas region. In its ongoing efforts to improve its safety programs, the RTC turned to BrickHouse Security to help with two initiatives during the past five years.

Technology Challenge

In 2019, the transit agency first contacted BrickHouse Security when it was looking for a simple and cost-effective way to track the location of its safety officers, which were contracted through a security company. It wanted to verify where the officers traveled in the field and how long they were riding the buses.

Based on the success of that project, BrickHouse is now also working with RTC on an initiative to improve bus driver safety. In both cases, BrickHouse provided the GPS equipment, as well as the management system and technical support to ensure the success of the safety programs for the transit agency.

How BrickHouse Security Helped

For the initial use case to verify the routes traveled by safety officers, RTC determined that small, lightweight GPS trackers would be the ideal technology for keeping tabs on the location of the contract employees.

After searching the market for GPS device vendors, they found BrickHouse Security. The RTC opted to use BrickHouse for its easy-to-use technology and responsive customer service.

The RTC says given its excellent experience with BrickHouse Security previously, it contacted the company again last year (2023) for help with an initiative to improve bus driver safety.

The RTC buses have multiple security features, but there was nothing available for drivers to use if they had an emergency while they were away from the bus on a break. RTC wanted a way to allow drivers to signal for help that would be much quicker, simpler, and more discreet than making a phone call.

Again, the BrickHouse Spark Nano proved the ideal device for this transit safety issue. The pocket-sized GPS tracker comes equipped with an emergency “panic button.”

BrickHouse also integrated custom data into the interactive map to give the RTC staff a unified view of all essential information in one place to speed response time.

With BrickHouse’s central management system, multiple RTC staff can receive emergency alerts through notifications or text messages when the button is pushed. In the interactive map on the BrickHouse platform, managers can see the bus driver’s location and the closest security officers to the incident.

RTC successfully completed the pilot for this project in early 2024 and is now deploying more than 500 Spark Nanos to all of its buses as a standard safety feature.

Key Benefits

BrickHouse has been a critical partner in helping the RTC fulfill its mission to ensure the safety of its riders and employees.

In addition to providing GPS and security equipment, BrickHouse offers an intuitive centralized platform to manage its devices.

The dependability of the BrickHouse IoT network was also a major benefit for both projects. In extensive testing, the RTC team was always able to connect to devices that had line of sight to any cell tower.

And BrickHouse worked with the RTC to customize the technology for the agency’s specific needs. For example, based on a request from the agency, BrickHouse modified the Spark Nano firmware so it would silently vibrate when the panic button was pushed (in order to notify the user that the emergency call was successfully sent).

BrickHouse also integrated custom data into the interactive map to give the RTC staff a unified view of all essential information in one place to speed response time.

Most of all, the RTC appreciates BrickHouse’s exceptional ability to partner with the agency. BrickHouse freely provided a set of its Spark Nano GPS trackers and any support the RTC needed during pilot tests. BrickHouse also responded immediately to any questions and provided excellent technical guidance.