March Networks debuted its new RideSafe video surveillance solution designed specifically for bus, para-transit and passenger rail applications at the American Public Transportation Association Expo in Houston, Texas.

The RideSafe solution is essentially comprised of several different components including: March Networks Command for Transit video management software; the RideSafe GT Series Hybrid Transit NVR; and a new portfolio of IP-cameras purpose-built for mobile environments such as the IR Wedge, IR MicroDome, and HD WDR NanoDome.

According to Net Payne, chief marketing officer for March Networks, the company initially launched a dedicated video recording platform for buses and railcars about 10 years ago, applying the same principles it had used for fixed transit facilities —rail stations, bus, and train depots— but hardened for mobile environments.

““The largest impediment of a moving product on a bus or a train is all of the shock and vibration combined with spinning drives and taking a fixed product and trying to put it in a mobile environment – most of the companies in the market were really failing at that,” explained Payne. “There had not been a really reliable product to ensure your data was there when you needed it or when you had an incident. Combine that with the fact that there was very limited centralized management, so you could have a large fleet of buses that had adopted video but you had very manual processes for getting that video off of the bus instead of using wireless, high-speed downloading capabilities.”

With the lessons March Networks has learned from continuing to develop and build reliable products for the transportation vertical through the years, Payne said the company felt the time was now right to combine all their various technologies into a streamlined solution for the market.

One of the things that really differentiates RideSafe from some of the other video management and recording platforms that are geared towards the transit industry, according to Payne, is that the Command for Transit software is the same for both fixed and mobile applications.