The Minnesota Valley Transit Authority (MVTA) announced it is now using Optibus’ Planning, Scheduling, and Rostering modules to provide services to the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area.

MVTA provides fixed-route and demand-response bus services to residents of seven suburbs in the south metro area: Apple Valley, Burnsville, Eagan, and Rosemount in Dakota County, and Savage, Prior Lake and Shakopee in Scott County. As a member of the Suburban Transit Association (STA), MVTA advocates for suburban transit needs in the Twin Cities metropolitan region.

MVTA said it was looking to create improvements across its operations, including enhancing its on-time performance and customer satisfaction rate, while reducing costs. 

To achieve these goals, MVTA said it chose Optibus’ Planning, Scheduling, and Rostering modules as its software solution. MVTA will also be one of the first transit agencies to implement Optibus’ new Operations module in early 2022.

“We released an RFP for a faster, unified solution for planning and scheduling,” said Luther Wynder, CEO at MVTA. “After receiving several proposals, our evaluation committee determined that Optibus was the superior solution.” 

MVTA had previously used one platform for strategic planning and a second platform for operational planning and scheduling. 

By switching to Optibus, MVTA will migrate all their planning, scheduling, and rostering processes onto a single, comprehensive platform.

“Moving all our work processes to one platform helps us work faster and more efficiently. Our passengers will see that translate to new and enhanced services,” said Luther.