SANTA BARBARA, Calif. & BILLERICA, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CHK America, the leading designer of customer information solutions for the U.S. public transportation industry and E Ink® Holdings, "E Ink" (8069.TW), the leading innovator of electronic ink technology in the world, today announced an agreement for CHK America to deliver advanced digital wayfinding solutions utilizing E Ink technology, providing more flexibility to transit agencies and better information to customers. Digital Bus Stops are the first products introduced. They provide transit riders with easily readable, up to date information at bus stops, under all lighting conditions. Transit agencies welcome the solution because they can be easily deployed almost anywhere without requiring electrical infrastructure at bus stops. The Digital Bus Stops from CHK America will be on display at the E Ink booth (#2237) at the upcoming Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas, March 16–17.
“CHK’s Digital Bus Stops, utilizing E Ink technology, provide a cutting edge solution to a long-term problem that all transit agencies face—how to deploy and keep service information current and user friendly at bus stops,” commented Rick Wood, CEO of CHK America. “Traditionally, at-stop information has been static, making update costs prohibitive, and the lack of electrical power at the vast majority of bus stops has made digital options impossible, until now.
Together with E Ink, we are replacing traditional static signs with high contrast, sunlight readable displays operated via battery or solar. The solution enables transit agencies to deliver service change updates to bus stops everywhere effectively and efficiently from one central location without expensive electrical infrastructure improvements, and at the same time provide improved service to riders with real-time departure information.”
“CHK America’s innovative wayfinding solution using E Ink’s thin and lightweight displays, is easy to deploy within existing infrastructure,” said Harit Doshi, head of the Signage Business Unit for E Ink. “The large area signage displays are ultra-low power and provide exceptional outdoor readability making them the ideal solution where power availability is a premium.”
CHK America has been providing award-winning wayfinding solutions to transit agencies for over 15 years, and two clients are set to test prototypes of the Digital Bus Stops.
Matthew Freidman, Director of Marketing, LYNX-Orlando, commented, “CHK has been a great partner during our wayfinding redesign. The natural next step for us to explore is their digital bus stop products, which are based on E Ink technology. We want to look at all amenity options for our current and new riders. After all, Orlando is the number one tourist destination in the world and we want to provide our customers what they expect as far as bus stop information without us incurring expensive infrastructure improvements.”
Scott Vetere, Director of Service Planning and Evaluation, Pittsburgh’s Port Authority of Allegheny County (PAAC), added, “This is the kind of game-changing infrastructure that will make our system easier to use and provide riders with information right at their fingertips. We are excited about this technology and look forward to testing it in the field.”
Digital Bus Stops are an important development for transit agencies whose customers do not want to, or are not able to, rely on mobile technology to receive updates. Of note, USA Today recently reported that a November 2015 HNTB Corporation study revealed that 38% of Americans would be motivated to take public transit more often if real-time schedules were displayed on location.1
Furthermore, a Pew Research Center study in October 2015 revealed that only 52% of adults with a household income of less than $30K own a smart phone2. Other barriers to using a smart phone for thisuse can result in expensive data and text charges; correctly inputting locations; small screens to decipher text, among other things.
CHK America is in development on additional products utilizing E Ink technology across various industry sectors including transit agencies and smart city developers.
About CHK America
Established in 1999, CHK America is the
premier best practice provider of customer information solutions for the
US public transportation industry. The company’s 8 Second Rule
has set the standard for communicating complex public transit
information to customers, after their research identified that customers
allow only eight seconds in which to interpret travel information before
becoming frustrated – resulting in customer dissatisfaction. Under the
leadership of CEO Rick Wood, a recognized speaker of and the foremost
authority in wayfinding strategies, CHK America now reaches over 2
billion--fully 20%--of public transportation customers in the United
States. Between customized information design and purpose-built hardware
fabrications, CHK America is providing solutions for many of the largest
multi-modal transit agencies in the US from WMATA in Washington DC to
DART in Dallas Texas, to LA Metro in Los Angeles, California. www.chkamerica.com
About E Ink Holdings
Founded in 1992 by Taiwan's leading
papermaking and printing group YFY (1907.TW), E Ink Holdings Inc.
(8069.TW) has transformed and defined the eReader market with its ePaper
technology, enabling a new multi-billion market in less than 10 years.
Its corporate philosophy aims to deliver revolutionary products, user
experiences, and environmental benefits through advanced technology
development. This vision has led to its continuous investments in the
field of ePaper displays as well as expanding the use of its
technologies into a number of other markets and applications. Its EPD
products make it the worldwide leader for ePaper. Its FFS technologies
are a standard for high end consumer electronic products. Listed in
Taiwan's GreTai Securities Market and the Luxembourg market, E Ink
Holdings is now the world's largest supplier of displays to the eReader
market. For corporate information, please visit www.einkgroup.com;
for EPD information, please visit www.eink.com
/ tw.eink.com.
1 USA Today, November 12, 2015. Link: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/11/12/survey-transit-riders/75592042/
2 Monica Anderson. “Technology Device Ownership: 2015.” Pew Research Center, October, 2015, Available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/29/technology-device-ownership-2015
