Automatic Vehicle Location System for Public Transportation in the Barcelona Area

On November 17th, GMV participated in the 12th edition of the Catalonia Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Workshops, organized by the Forum on New Transportation Technologies, ITS Spain, and ITS Catalonia. These are non‑profit organizations that bring together the public and private sectors and academia, as a way to advance the field of intelligent transportation systems and promote more sustainable and efficient forms of mobility.

GMV was a sponsor for the event and also participated in the roundtable discussion dedicated to public transportation. Carme Fábregas, Director of Systems and Innovation for the Barcelona Metropolitan Transportation Authority (ATM), and Ana Herrera Alcubilla, GMV’s Manager of Smart Cities Business Development, introduced those participating in that roundtable to the ATM’s new Computer-Aided Dispatch / Automatic Vehicle Location (CAD/AVL) and Multi-Fleet Operation and Information System, known as SAEi.

In this way, Barcelona’s transportation authority has again relied upon GMV to supply this new CAD/AVL and Multi-Fleet, Multi-Operator Operation and Information System, which will be installed on 916 buses. Also, as part of this project, GMV will be upgrading the CAD/AVL system it originally supplied in 2001, which is still being used by the 27 operators supervised by the ATM.

GMV’s information systems are designed to satisfy the users’ expectations for increased digitization, while also meeting the needs of the operators and transportation authorities, who are constantly looking for tools that can help them address issues such as the need to improve punctuality and service quality. The systems provided by GMV will assist these operators with making decisions, giving them real‑time oversight that can enhance operation of their services and correct any operational anomalies that arise.

The SAEi equipment that GMV is providing to the ATM will be scaled to each operator’s needs. They will be given the possibility of incorporating two different types of equipment, with the more advanced options including an onboard CCTV system and a passenger counting system.

As Ana Herrera emphasized during her presentation at the 12th Catalonia ITS Workshops, this new collaboration with Barcelona’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority will help further solidify GMV’s position as a leading technology provider in that municipality.

GMV’s intelligent transportation systems have already been installed in cities that include Madrid, Barcelona, and Seville (Spain), Cascais (Portugal), Gdańsk and Szczecin (Poland), Los Angeles (USA), Marrakesh and Rabat (Morocco), and Montevideo (Uruguay). GMV has emerged as a worldwide leader in the design, development, implementation, and operation of intelligent transportation systems based on IoT, mobile communications, and global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), and it now has more than 400 customers in 30 countries on 5 continents.