History
Slovak abbreviation DPMZ stands for "Transport enterprise of the city of Zilina, Ltd." which was established on May 1st, 1949. It started to provide bus services for the public in city of Zilina on October 28th the very same year. In 1962, DPMZ was incorporated into the nation-wide union CSAD (= Czechoslovak bus and inter-city coach services). 30 years later, it separated in 1992.
In 1978, DPMZ came out with idea of adopting trolley-bus services in Zilina. It became engaged in electrification research based on electric traction. It elaborated "The project of new concept in municipal public transport-planning" in 1985. Three years later, the project was realized as a bus alternative of trolley-bus services. Finally, the municipality approved construction works concerning building of pylons, mains electricity supply etc. to begin in May 1992. On November 17th, 1994, DPMZ started to run the first trolley-bus route that served to almost 100,000 inhabitants, students and visitors of the city of Zilina.
DPMZ (Urban Public Transport Business in Zilina) is one of those public transport businesses which by the way of gradual implementation of IT technologies keep improving their services and performance.
Since 1996 until now, DPMZ has implemented the following:
- electronic payment by Smart Cards;
- electronic automatic diagnostic methods for buses and trolley-busses determined by the scanner of operational information. Such progressive diagnostics provides for preventing failures, whereby securing high reliability of the service;
- networking of all the moving and stationary objects by means of the digital trunk. Apart from the data required for the establishment of the connection and for communication, this system enables sending of short messages and the operational data to the centre (from 06/2002).
The system of vehicle monitoring does not make use of GPS, but it uses the wheel rotation instead, with a parallel check at referential points. Vehicles are equipped with computers offering the following information:
- to the driver - announcing the end of break, delay...
- to the passengers - stops reporting, news displaying, announcement about extraordinary events, …
- to the controllers - technical condition of the vehicle, registration of all the activities connected with the operation (stops, opening - closing the doors, traffic inspection, errors during operation, ...)