In transportation, geography is key, and the geographic information system (GIS) is a vital data management and analysis tool. GIS serves three distinct transportation markets: transportation infrastructure management, fleet and logistics management, and transit management.

Transportation Infrastructure Management
GIS is used to manage and analyze information with a geographic component. GIS is used to support many aspects of infrastructure management including planning, design, construction, operations, and maintenance. More than 80 percent of the information used to manage road, rail, and port facilities have a spatial component. GIS can be used to determine the location of an event or asset and its relationship or proximity to another event or asset, which may be the critical factor leading to a decision about design, construction, or maintenance.

Fleet and Logistics Management
Efficient operations require accurate, timely decision making. GIS solutions for fleet and logistics management exist in the areas of customer service, crew management, street and rail network management, and vehicle/depot management. Knowing where a vehicle, pickup, or delivery is at any given time leverages assets for optimum deployment and cost savings. Customer satisfaction, competitive position, timely response, effective deployment, and profitability all stand to gain. GIS is being used in thousands of organizations for the creation, display, analysis, and presentation of location-based information. GIS can be used to support everything from inventory tracking to ideal delivery routes.

Transit Management
Improving the mobility of today's citizens is a great challenge for public transit operators. Expanding urban areas and geographically dispersed employment centers have replaced the dominant central business location. Automobiles have reduced the demand for public transportation. And, it is difficult to offer choices and preferred services when revenues and subsidies are at risk.

Route planners, dispatch technicians, service analysts, marketing and community relations managers, and transit patrons can all benefit from a better understanding of transit vehicle, route, and facility locations. Routes can be maintained directly in street network databases and tied to neighborhood and employment center demographics, as well as schedule databases. GIS is used by transit operators to great advantage, supporting several disciplines and functional areas. Moreover, because all departments can access a single geographic database along with their specific departmental data, organizational coordination and decision making is improved. GIS is successfully used for bus management and rail management.

Bus management has used GIS for route planning and analysis, bus dispatch and emergency response, automatic vehicle location and tracking, paratransit scheduling and routing, and bus stop and facility inventory. Rail management has used GIS for rail system facility management; track, power, communications, and signal maintenance; accident reporting and analysis; demographic analysis and route restructuring; ridership analysis and reporting; and transportation planning and modeling.

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