Contingency Bus System
CBS reads the TfNSW timetable and specification, builds your vehicle blocks and driver shifts under your own rules, counts every hour and kilometre depot to depot, and produces the GTFS, the TODIS file and the invoice.
What happens when the work arrives
Today that is two days of someone rekeying a timetable into a roster, and every typo becomes an operational problem on Saturday night. CBS does the mechanical part and leaves you the decisions.
Drop in the Excel timetable and the Word specification. CBS reads them into routes, trips, stands and standby requirements, shows you every line it found, and commits nothing until you confirm it.
Trips are chained into vehicle blocks from your depot, with repositioning where the work is one-directional. You see how many buses it needs before you commit a single driver.
Blocks become driver shifts under your shift rules — maximum span, breaks, sign-on and sign-off, minimum engagement. Shifts that would breach are refused, not flagged after the fact.
Each driver gets their shift on a phone: sign-on time, which bus, stands, departure times, the stop list, and who to ring at 4am.
Sign-on, pre-departure check, trip by trip. Breakdowns, standby call-ins and incidents captured as they happen with time and place attached.
GTFS and TODIS files out to TfNSW, invoice built from what actually ran, with the supporting documentation attached.
Depot to depot
You are paid by the hour and the kilometre, and the run to the first stand and back from the last is part of it. CBS measures that on every shift instead of estimating it at the end of the month.
An example shift. Your own rules and rates produce your own numbers.
What comes out
Every output is generated from the same record, so the timetable you publish, the data you send and the invoice you issue cannot disagree with each other.
Rates
Rates are held with their history, never overwritten. Each component escalates on its own index and its own cycle, and because the published figures arrive late, CBS holds the escalation and recalculates the affected service dates when they land.
When a quarter's index is published, CBS recalculates every service date it covers and produces the adjustment as its own claim line. Reconstructing that across a quarter of possessions is a day's work nobody does, so it usually goes unclaimed.
Every invoice is checked against the rate that applied on the service date, not the rate in force today.
Before the invoice goes
What the specification committed you to, what your drivers actually ran, and what your invoice claims. When they disagree, CBS says so while you can still do something about it.
| Block | Specified | Operated | Claimed | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| R4-02 · Sutherland – Waterfall | 18 | 18 | 18 | Agrees |
| R4-05 · Sutherland – Cronulla | 22 | 21 | 21 | Agrees Trip 14 not run — vehicle defect recorded 04:12, standby deployed 04:40. |
| R4-07 · Loftus shuttle | 14 | 14 | 16 | Over-claim Two trips claimed that no driver recorded. Caught before the invoice was sent. |
| R4-11 · Engadine – Heathcote | 16 | 16 | 14 | Under-claim Two trips run and never billed. Added back. |
Figures shown are an example, not a customer's data.
While it is running
Trips operated against trips specified, departures against the published time, first and last services, by route and by day. Measured from your own trip records, so it stands up whether or not a live feed covers the work.
In production
Rather than a sales call, there will be a full recorded walkthrough: the spec going in, the blocks and shifts being built, the files going out and the invoice coming back. Watch it in your own time, as many times as you like, and send it to whoever else needs to see it.
Published here once the system is complete
Price
$900 / month
+ $17 per bus-day
Excluding GST
A bus-day is one bus working one service day. An 18-bus Saturday and a 16-bus Sunday is 34 bus-days. Quiet months cost you less; nothing is charged per trip, per driver or per user.
No setup fee, no lock-in.
| Scale | Bus-days / month | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Occasional work | 40 | $1,580 |
| Most weekends | 120 | $2,940 |
| Multiple corridors | 350 | $6,850 |
Against one planner's time, or one deduction dispute you can finally answer.