Los Angeles MTA Gets Maximum Mileage With New Folder

The in-plant at the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) may not keep the trains and buses runing on time, but it does print and bind the schedules, brochures, flyers and posters on which millions of riders depend.

The MTA administers, constructs and operates the sprawling Metro transportation system for Los Angeles county, including bus, light rail and subway routes. Bus routes alone are revised three times a year. During one such recent "shake-up" period, the in-plant was asked to produce 40,000-50,000 revised bus schedules for no fewer than 142 lines in just five weeks, according to Print Shop Supervisor Rob Hartert.

Clearly, having the right tools for the job at hand is a major factor in the MTA print shop's enduring success—and a key reason the organization looks to Heidelberg to fulfill its prepress, pressroom and bindery needs. The in-plant's recent installation of a Heidelberg Stahlfolder Ti 36, for example, eliminated costly outsourcing and streamlined the in-house production of tens of thousands of pocket guides.

"We produce 10,000 each of 10 different pocket guides at a clip," says Hartert. "Before we acquired the Stahlfolder Ti 36, every time we sent the guides to an outside vendor to be folded, it cost us up to $1,800. It just made economic sense for us to control the job and our costs by acquiring the means to do it ourselves."

Because it is designed to meet the demanding requirements of very small fold lengths and multiple executable parallel and crossfolds, the automated Ti 36 folder is ideally suited for the production of the pocket guides, each of which contains both a schedule and a map.

Hartert cites the folder's high-performance feeders for their reliability and productivity, together with dependable sheet separation, alignment and transport, and an optional small-format stacker at the delivery. Make–readies have shrunk to between just 10 and 15 minutes, thanks to the use of the Festa system to adjust the folding roller gaps and slitter shaft spacings.

"It's a wonderful product and very reliable," Hartert reports. "We just set it up, and it practically runs itself." IPG

—By Steven Calov