OREANDA-NEWS.   GAZ Group developed and supplied a whole fleet of new buses to carry visitors to the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The buses were specially designed to conform to the requirements of reliability and safety for international events of this level. According to the Autonomous Non-Commercial Organization “Olympics Transport Directorate”, since 7 February approximately 42,000 passengers have made from 2 to 4 daily trips on “Olympic” GOLAZ and LiAZ buses serving the routes of the Coastal and Mountain clusters.

During preparation for the Olympic Games in Sochi a traffic management intelligence system was created which allowed the city road network traffic to increase capacity by 2.5 times and the system certainly proved its high efficiency with the volume of passengers on bus routes reaching up to 2,000 people per hour.

More than 100 bus routes were developed to serve athletes, representatives of the Olympic family, mass media and fans and traffic jams were avoided partly due to dedicated bus lanes. At peak times of loading the bus traffic interval was up to one bus per minute. Vyacheslav Bauer, Deputy Director of Passenger Transportation Department says, “We chose the right type of rolling stock: both the 15 and 12-meter buses have been particularly useful and the high speed of landing in low-floor city buses enables no crowding of passengers at bus stops”.

GAZ Group created 709 GOLAZ buses and 30 LiAZ buses especially for guests and participants to the Olympic andParalympic Games. The new buses showed an extremely high maneuverability in the difficult terrain of the Sochi mountain cluster due to the rear steering pivoted axle and the effective work of Scania engines with high torque. The buses are equipped with unprecedented safety systems: smoke detectors, video surveillance and firefighting systems, onboard navigation terminal of communication with the traffic control station. LiAZ city buses are equipped with the system “Speaking City”, which allows blind and partially sighted people to get information about the route and whether its doors are open for landing.

The buses are equipped with the GLONASS system that allows their location to be tracked on a real time basis. Control over passenger transport movement is carried out in the Transport Logistics center of Sochi. The automatic control system monitors the workload of the Olympic routes and technical condition of the buses. On-board equipment installed on each bus allows the dispatcher to control online the situation in the cabin and the operation of safety systems of the bus.

Buses to serve the Olympic andParalympic Gamesare placed in 3 specialized fleets of the city: in the mountain and the coastal cluster, and in the Olympic Park. The Central traffic control station of the GAZ Group Bus Division, which receives and processes applications for maintenance and repairs in cases of road accidents involves more than 100 high-grade technical specialists of GAZ Group and Scania. There are also mobile teams which can provide technical assistance on the routes if necessary.