San Diego Eliminates Waste in Waste Collection Using Cingular-Powered Wireless Data Solution
27 Juin 2006 - 10:45PM
PR Newswire (US)
City's Visionary V-TRAC Service Innovation Taps Cingular's Wireless
Technology To Realize Cost Savings of Over $1 Million While
Improving Service to Residents SAN DIEGO and ATLANTA, June 27
/PRNewswire/ -- The City of San Diego is more than quadrupling the
deployment of its Cingular-powered V-TRAC wireless vehicle
re-routing program after an initial rollout generated more than $1
million in savings while expanding services to tens of thousands of
homes. The V-TRAC program, developed and initially used by the
City's Environmental Services Division (ESD), combines Global
Positioning System (GPS) technology with Cingular Wireless'
nationwide* wireless data network to improve the time and
scheduling of trash and recyclables collections. The City is
expanding the program to its Metropolitan Wastewater, General
Services and Water Departments, while increasing the number of
enabled vehicles from 250 to 1,100. City officials project that the
program will realize approximately $10 million in savings over the
next decade. "The City's vision was to leverage wireless
technologies to improve efficiency and customer service, while
keeping costs contained," said Nader Tirandazi, Information
Technology Manager, ESD. "Cingular has been a great partner since
the beginning of the project and has played an integral role in
turning our vision into reality by delivering the network speed,
reliability and most importantly, the coverage we needed to enable
V-TRAC to be deployed in every community in the City." Word of the
program's success has garnered interest from municipalities
throughout the U.S. To showcase V-TRAC's capabilities, the City has
implemented a pilot program in which it hosts the service for the
municipality and provides the enabling wireless technology free of
charge for up to three months. "An essential element of good
government is finding more efficient ways to provide quality
customer service while reducing costs," said San Diego Mayor Jerry
Sanders. "Our V-TRAC program is a shining example of how innovation
can produce tangible benefits for our communities, and we are
particularly proud of the fact the program has been embraced by
local governments across the nation who are participating in V-TRAC
pilots." The City of San Diego's Environmental Services Department
(ESD) is responsible for collecting the household waste of
approximately 1.26 million residents of the nation's seventh
largest city. In just 342.6 square miles, ESD provides weekly
refuse collection to 318,000 customers and bi-weekly curbside
recycling to 276,000 customers - totaling 29 million stops and
500,000 tons of waste and recycling collected each year - all free
of charge. Given this volume, there's a constant need to make sure
that the collection process is coordinated in the most efficient
and cost saving manner. Enter the V-TRAC program. It began as a
wireless Sanitation Truck Monitoring system (STMS) that combines
Cingular's GPRS technology and GPS for tracking vehicle location
and overseeing the mechanical performance of the trucks on the
road. It also provides near real-time communications between
drivers on the road and management support at the home base. Today,
the system supports 400,000 to 500,000 communications per day,
providing exact location coordinates, mechanical performance, and
vehicle speed. This enables dispatchers to distribute and update
work assignments real time while they are in-transit, and gives
them the flexibility to make up-to-the-minute changes when needed.
For example, when a customer calls and requests a service that
requires immediate attention, drivers working nearby can now be
dispatched to the location in less time. This also reduces the need
to send extra trucks out on the road. Since the program kicked off
in 2001, the City has eliminated 50 routes per week, decreased the
mileage traveled by City Collection trucks by 900 miles per day -
and a resulting drop of 390 gallons of fuel usage daily. In
addition to the cost savings from the re-routing program, the City
has been able to expand yard waste collection from 150,000 to over
200,000 homes, reducing the landfill materials and enabling the
City of San Diego to comply with state waste reduction mandates.
"The solid return on investment we've achieved with V-TRAC and
Cingular makes us very excited about the prospects of leveraging
high-bandwidth wireless technologies, such as EDGE and UMTS/HSDPA,
to develop a new and even more powerful service," said Tirandazi.
About Cingular Wireless Cingular Wireless is the largest wireless
carrier in the United States, serving 55.8 million customers.
Cingular, a joint venture between AT&T Inc., formerly SBC
Communications Inc., (NYSE:T), and BellSouth Corporation
(NYSE:BLS), has the largest digital voice and data network in the
nation -- the ALLOVER(TM) network -- and the largest
mobile-to-mobile community of any national wireless carrier.
Cingular is a leader in third generation wireless technology. Its
3G network is the first widely available service in the world to
use HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) technology. Cingular
is the only U.S. wireless carrier to offer Rollover(R), the
wireless plan that lets customers keep their unused monthly
minutes. Details of the company are available at
http://www.cingular.com/. Get Cingular Wireless press releases
e-mailed to you automatically. Sign up at
http://cingular.mediaroom.com/ * Not available in all areas.
DATASOURCE: Cingular Wireless CONTACT: John Kampfe,
+1-908-696-4536, or wireless, +1-908-432-3473, or Art Navarro,
+1-562-468-6520, or wireless, +1-949-300-1329, both of Cingular
Wireless; or Jessica Savalla of the City of San Diego,
+1-858-573-1291, or wireless, +1-858-518-8210 Web site:
http://www.cingular.com/ http://cingular.mediaroom.com/
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