PTSI Transportation
Transit and Motor Coach Experience and Expertise
PTSI Transportation has extensive experience in transit and motor coach planning, operations, and service issues. This experience, like the firm itself, extends back over fifty years, with the aggregate of the individual professionals bringing several hundred years of transit and motor coach work to bear.
Our Work for You Can Cover A Matrix of Possibilities:
Jurisdictional: our firm is able to provide services covering: metropolitan areas, states, counties, and local and special jurisdictions (and of course, to private carriers and companies).
Disciplines: we can provide expertise in: policy development, public outreach, planning, modeling, bid preparation and evaluation, route and system design, fare structures and collection, marketing and branding, customer service, training, and evaluation.
Modal and Intermodal: our work has included local transit, regional systems, intercity and luxury coach services, airport ground transportation, feeder and employer shuttles, park and ride service, rail feeders, intercity Thruway (rail connection) service, and all levels of bus rapid transit and limited stop services.
Representative Projects in Bus Transit and Motor Coach Service and Operations
- Comprehensive data collection and evaluation of Mercer Metro (Trenton) bus system after the fare was made free.
- Countywide redesign of Morris and Mercer (New Jersey) bus systems.
- Express Route Policy for the Borough President of Manhattan.
- Inventory of all bus lines for all companies in a ten-county portion of NJ. Mapping of all routes and fare zones, including overlaps. Creating new “fair fare” zones, to be revenue neutral.
- For the Port Authority of NY and NJ, inventory of all airport bus services, including interviews of operators and analyses.
- For Carey Transportation / Connecticut Limo, evaluation of airport bus service, comparison of services with airport flight records, and redesign of schedules.
- For Ground Net International, conduct of international airport access conference and presentations made at meetings. Development of an interline ticketing and clearinghouse system.
- Design of new fare collection systems for Miami, Buffalo, Dallas, Baltimore, Toronto, and New York City.
- Review fare collection procedures and security for several systems.
- Provide concept and implementation review for new intercity bus service in Pennsylvania including Amtrak Thruway connecting bus/rail service.
- Bus route planning for Lake Charles LA and Denton TX.
- Design of internal circulator for Liberty State Park, in Jersey City, NJ, and for Atlantic City, NJ.
- For a San Francisco airport bus carrier, service evaluation and design, including a new downtown terminal.
- For a major New York area operator, review of express and airport services (schedules, stops, timetables, service areas, signage, and marketing).
- Fare collection evaluation of equipment and security, and money room design for several carriers.
- Advisory services for Liberty Lines, including history documentation, public perceptions, regulatory evolution, NTDB comparisons, monthly revenue and ridership trends, contract operators, franchise issues, media reports, and contract reviews.
- Advise on response to state-sponsored request for operator bids for new-concept inter-county quasi-bus-rapid-transit system over the new (Mario Cuomo) Tappan Zee bridge.
- Development of two new-style trans-Hudson bus routes for possible operation by private carriers, connecting major activity centers which have never had through public transportation; these routes to have superior customer service, improved vehicles, and a high degree of connectivity with other modes and services.
- Generated public sector awareness on a local and county level of potential mobility impairments due to inadequate public transportation planning and service to a new megamall development in a major metropolitan area already suffering from a lack of highway and transit capacity.
Summary of Team Members – Transit and Motor Coach Efforts
Mayer Horn P.E., PTOE, PTP.
Mayer Horn serves as a Senior Advisor for Railway and Transit Service to PTSI Transportation, and has been assisting in various projects since 2008. He is also the Project Manager at Greater Jamaica Development Corporation Planning On-Call. Mr. Horn is a registered professional in three states and has over fifty years experience in the industry. He has held many supervisory positions in planning and project management to companies and projects such as CARE NY / Engel Burman Group, the Route 110 Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Study, the New York City Department of Transportation, the Hunts Point Produce Market Logistical Enhancement Study, NJ Transit, and many others. He is the former Vice President of Carey Transportation, at the time New York’s leading airport ground transportation provider.
John M. Reilly, Ph.D.
Dr. Reilly is Senior Advisor – Bus and Transit Operations. He is former Deputy Executive Director of Capital District Transportation Authority in Albany NY, and has been an independent consultant in mass transit and transportation planning and traffic engineering. He is in the New York State Public Transit Association Hall of Fame. Jack works with PTSI Transportation on numerous efforts related to bus operations in the New York metropolitan area, and has advised county and state transportation entities.
Joseph Schwieterman Ph.D.
Dr. Schwieterman heads the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University, Chicago IL. As such, he is perhaps the nation’s foremost scholar on intercity bus (and rail) passenger transportation, and is the author of many reports on the state of the industry, as well as several books on transportation and metropolitan subjects. Prior to becoming a professor, and teaching at DePaul University, he served United Airlines as a marketing/pricing officer. He has given Congressional testimony on transportation matters.
Patricia Chemka Speranza
Patricia (Patty) Chemka Speranza is PTSI Transportation’s Senior Advisor – Public Transportation. Prior to joining us, she served as Deputy Commissioner in the Department of Public Works and Transportation. At the Westchester County Department of Transportation, Ms. Speranza was also the Director of Planning and, before that, the Associate Planner/Planner at the Capital and Facilities Management Unit there. During this time, she acted as liaison with federal, state, and regional funding agencies, prepared the department’s annual Unified Planning Work Program, and reviewed local land use proposals. She presided over the Bee Line transit system, and its operating contracts.
Michael R. Weinman
Michael Weinman is the Managing Director of PTSI Transportation. A career rail passenger transportation professional, he founded this consultancy in 1972 and has brought together associates from several nations of the world to form a company specialized in train operations, equipment, marketing, on board and customer services, training, deluxe tour train operations, bus and transit services, and asset residual value optimization. Prior to PTSI Transportation, Mr. Weinman was one of Amtrak’s first operating officers, and before that, worked for New York Central Railroad and Penn Central Transportation Company and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. He holds three university degrees in passenger transportation.
An Invitation for You and Your Staff
You are cordially invited to our office and research library in Rutherford NJ. We maintain comprehensive files on the bus operations of North America, and many in Europe and elsewhere, including route maps and timetables, historical service information, research reports, baseline modal comparisons, and considerable market and customer service data. In addition, you may view our Route Learning System™, used for training the operators of rail systems, and adaptable to fixed route bus and trolleybus transit services.
Don’t hesitate to contact us if you require any further information on our transit and motor coach capabilities
About PTSI Transportation
With over half a century of service to the railway and transportation industry, PTSI Transportation has found its market niche in areas not well served by other consultancies. For the railway and transit industries in particular, these include customer and on board service, marketing, operations training tools and management systems and standards. Rail passenger equipment and motor coach service and operations are additional specialties.
The heart of PTSI Transportation and its capabilities lies in its team of over 40 transportation professionals. The team has collective experience of about 1,500 years, and includes persons who have been out “on the ground and in the field” as well as those with doctoral degrees, and professional engineers and planners. We bring a multinational perspective with associates and advisors from Britain and Australia as well as the United States.
Our headquarters are centrally located in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area, within sight of (and about twenty-five minutes from) the skyscrapers of Manhattan, with a bus stop at our front door.
A University Transportation Club field trip with some of our team as students
NJ Transit MCI D4500CL Coach on route 190 stopping at PTSI Transportation headquarters