Our Experience

Is the result of more than 20 years of OPT's team in transport planning, through its GIST system, currently essential for resource planning of the major public transport companies in Portugal (CARRIS, STCP, RL, TST, Horários do Funchal, SMTUC, etc).

Our Commitment

Trying to meet the planning needs of small and medium sized companies, OPT has concentrated much of its innovative potential in research and development to this tool. Our commitment is of "market" and "future", being able to respond to a wide range of public transports operators worldwide.

Our Product

GISTLight emphasis is on providing a light system, of simple usage, but highly versatile and general enough to cope with a vast market of operators that deal with passenger public transportation. Accordingly, a “desktop” application approach has been decided, marketed as a regular software “package”, easy to install and configure, and with file oriented data storage (GLX format) as opposed to using a centralized database with a heavy weight on system maintenance. The followed approach resembles applications like those within Microsoft Office suite, so the analogy with a “Public Transport Office Planner” designation wouldn’t be inappropriate.

The rich set of functionality turn this application into a powerful and precious aid for the planner:

Easy setups: Just executes the “Installer” and activate the license. No need for specialized user or a technician.

Simple and portable format: Easy to work with and analyse directly through any text editing tool. Planning documents are easy to send by email.

Graphical Interaction: Most operations may be directly applied over the solution’s graphical representation.

Geo-referenced network definition: Characterization of the transport network, its paths and lines. The network may be directly edited over a geo-referenced map. This map may be obtained locally or freely through an online connection with the Open Street Maps service.

Trip Offer Definition: Creating the trips that make up the company’s offer. Some mechanisms are provided to simplify the creation and editing of trips. Constraints on vehicle types may also be applied to these trips.

Duty Definition (Vehicles/Drivers): Creating the needed vehicle duties and driver duties for fulfilling the offer. Duty validation criteria may also be defined. The application assists the user on creating duties that comply to the defined criteria.

Dynamic Parameterization: Enables the definition of calculation rules or restrictions that apply to driver duties. It may be used, for instance, as a mean to change the calculation method of the drivers work time or for imposing restrictions on work breaks.

Integrated Edition and Visualization of Trips and Duties
: This tool is able to integrate trips, vehicles and drivers in a consistent unified workspace. Three totally synchronized views reflect changes applied on any of these concepts. The planner may initiate a solution in any of these concepts, besides the traditional trips-vehicles-drivers sequence.

Automatic Duty Generation: Several automatisms are provided to enable the generation vehicle and driver duties. In the future several plug-ins will be released with more advanced automatic and semi-automatic features.

Reports and Interfaces: Reports for characterizing timetables and the solution with the possibility to export to Excel. Listings of trips, vehicle duties, driver duties, and others.

Integration: Being OPT a company also specialized in systems for Information to the Public, where InfoPub stands out as a reference, it is possible and easy to integrate this kind of systems with GISTLight. It is also possible to export data from InfoPub/GISTLight to the GTFS format (Google Transit Feed Specification) allowing the easy display of the company’s network and schedules over Google Maps. Integration of GISTLight solutions with external systems is also possible (ex: crew rostering or real time monitoring systems.

Customization and Extended Support: Although marketed as a package, GISTLight may be complemented by an extended service for setup, configuration, training and support.