METRO Magazine is in the final process for accepting submissions for the return of its Innovative Solutions Awards in conjunction with 2016’s BusCon, North America’s largest bus show, in Indianapolis Sept. 19 to 21. The deadline is Friday, May 27.

Have you recently partnered with a solutions provider within the last year to implement a new innovation at your operation that has helped you save money, run more efficiently, streamline operations, improved customer satisfaction or increased ridership? Tell us what you did and how it has positively impacted your business.

In all, four transit agencies were honored last year for implementing a new initiative that helped them save money, run more efficiently, streamline operations, improve customer satisfaction and safety, or increase ridership.

In Cleveland, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) teamed with Lytx to implement the Lytx DriveCam system and designed a plan to effectively utilize event data from the solution by identifying risky behaviors that have the highest impact on the authority and focusing coaching efforts on those behaviors. Since implementation, all four of GCRTA’s riskiest behaviors have seen an improvement. The authority has also seen a decrease in events captured by the video event recorders for those risky behaviors. GCRTA has also seen a 20% decrease in near collisions.

Minnesota’s St. Cloud Metro Bus was honored for its Mobility Training Center — a unique facility that combines the elements of paratransit eligibility screening/ability assessments, travel training and community outreach into a single customer-friendly location. Since launching in July 2014, Metro Bus has developed mutually beneficial relationships within the network of care providers, senior living sites, social service agencies and organizations that support people with disabilities and seniors. The agency has also experienced financial savings, since the cost to provide service through fixed-route services is significantly cheaper than the cost to provide service through Dial-A-Ride.

The Jacksonville (Fla.) Transportation Authority were honored for its Route Optimization Initiative, which enabled the agency to add extended weekend service, improve frequencies on busy corridors and increase service hours without increasing annual operating costs, while Austin Texas’ Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority were honored for making available its vehicle location data to its customer applications, the open data community and via mobile app-to-app collaboration to help customers better plan their bus and rail trips based on real-time information rather than relying on static schedules.

Applications can be submitted either by the operation or the solutions provider and will be judged by our BusCon Advisory Board, with winners and shortlisted submissions recognized at BusCon’s Award Breakfast on Wednesday, Sept. 21.

This is a great opportunity to highlight the successes of your operation or company. Winners will also be featured in an upcoming issue of METRO.

To submit an application, click here.