Allied Telesis announced that it was chosen by Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) to design, deploy and support a unique digital signage solution for its light rail platforms throughout Santa Clara County. VTA facilities are widely deployed and require a robust, scalable solution that allows central management of network and content.
The 30 real-time information (RTI) signs went into service in mid-December and are serving passengers well. VTA is responsible for bus, light rail and paratransit operations and also serves as the county’s congestion management agency. In an effort to upgrade the ridership experience and improve communications with its customers, VTA decided to replace existing, older LED displays on light rail platforms (that were capable of only showing the next-arriving train) with 42” ruggedized video monitors that can extend the amount and types of information VTA can share, including real-time arrival information, emergency announcements, informational slides as well as advertisements.
According to Mark Brûlé, Allied Telesis Chief Application Architect, “The latest solution that we developed for VTA incorporated products from a variety of leading technology vendors. The CMS was installed in an Allied Telesis EtherGRID-DC deployment in VTA’s data center as well as EtherGRID-Mini solutions at each sign to cache content and drive the display.”
Richard Bertalan, Technology Manager at VTA, added, “A Bay-Area IT networking leader, since the early days of Silicon Valley, we knew that by working with Allied Telesis to run the CMS communications applications on the backbone of its resilient network infrastructure, we would have a winner for VTA, its thousands of regular passengers and the tens of thousands of football fans projected to converge in Santa Clara County for Super Bowl 50.”
