Christie Moves Champaign-Urbana Transportation Control Room Forward with New High Resolution 55 Inch Flat Panels

For the more than ten million passengers who rely on transit in Champaign, Illinois, and the surrounding areas, the new Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District ( CUMTD) control room provides peace of mind as dispatchers monitor and respond more quickly to activities en route with a large Christie visual display wall.

As part of its Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP), the CUMTD’s newly-built, larger headquarters includes a control room equipped with 10 state-of-the-art Christie FHD551-X LCD full-HD flat panels –ideal for control room solutions requiring larger, brighter video walls for a clearer view of information.

“The new Christie video wall is at the center of information sharing. It’s on 20 hours a day, seven days a week to monitor bus activities in the city,” noted Karl Gnadt, director of market development, CUMTD. “Christie’s flat panels are reliable and provide excellent image quality.”

Zdi, Inc, the systems integration company headquartered in Normal, Illinois, who won the contract commissioned by the CUMTD, partnered with AECOM to design the new control room, and selected Christie’s solutions and visual display products. “It’s the quality of the products, the ease of installation and the service that I knew I would get from Christie that made the decision easy. They were all spot on, and we will definitely use Christie products again,” said Jay McArdle, lead engineer with Zdi, Inc.

“The CUMTD required a solution that was up to date and could fit into a challenging space configuration, while providing the pixel density needed to display feeds from 300 new video cameras situated in bus stops, the transfer terminal as well as in maintenance and administration facilities,” said John Stark, Christie’s senior director of Collaborative Visual Solutions. “Christie has a broad range display solutions that lets you monitor, control and interact with all your visual assets – from any source – in real time.”

The Christie FHD551-X is a tiled LCD solution for a wide range of video wall applications, including control rooms, corporate and retail displays, and digital-out-of-home advertising.

This full-HD resolution, narrow bezel, flat-panel display is energy efficient with LED backlighting, and controlled brightness levels that are well suited for indoor environments.

According to Gnadt, “The dispatchers love the new control center, love the screens and their ability to enlarge images and see video feeds more quickly, which increases their response time for all activities.”