Great Western Coffee Shop

Starting off with a bus example ... but a pointer to a very big subject


Bus real time data has never seemed reliable to me even at the best of times - even when you know that a stated number of minutes comes from real time tracking, and a stated time is scheduled from a timetable.  Tracked time can be WAY out when a bus gets stuck in a traffic jam or reaches a slower section of road; a late running service shown by time is lost off the screen at the time it's due, even if it has not appeared. That latter can be an especially problem with rail replacement buses where, by their occasional nature, you do not have a population of users familiar with the system's limitations - you have a population who largely believe what they are told and get really worried / panic whe a bus goes off the display.

Travelling in Cornwall just over a week ago, I learned that trains may disappear off the boards at Penzance when due, and lie with text like "on time" when the incoming train is so late it doesn't even arrive until after it was due back out.  The staff just laughed and re-assured the handful of waiting passengers.  Similar things at Camborne too ... by the time a late running IET turned up it was being advertised as the Dundee train.

Cheltenham Spa even has a time machine ... 1st train expected at 09:48 and second at 09:40 - and why tell us where first class is located on a train that's terminating there?  Perhaps (in hindsight) that information is provided to help the butlers, porters and drivers who have come to the station to help and collect their employers.

What irks me is the bus routes the real time information is supplied at.

number 24 in south Bristol is on a one route bus route

next bus in one minute
next bus in 29 minutes
next bus in 59  minutes

Number 1 route that goes to Broomhill in east bristol
Whats the point of putting the times of arrival on the the last three stops before it reaches the terminus

I think I related elsewhere about my most recent experience of this.  I was waiting for the bus to Bodmin Parkway at Bodmin General station. The bus I was waiting for was on the screen and the 'due' time commenced to count down in minutes.  When it got to zero the bus hadn't arrived, and it then disappeared off the screen.  Ten minutes later and the bus still hadn't arrived, so I started to walk down the hill towards the town centre, hoping to find a taxi.  Then, guess what....... ::)

Then, a few weeks ago, before the current embargo, I was out meeting a friend who lives in a remote village on the edge of Dartmoor.  It actually has a bus service serving several hamlets, four times a day, that runs in a one-way circular route taking about 20 minutes in total.  Waiting at the bus stop with no realtime or other tracking information, then scheduled bus doesn't turn up at due time.  Wait half an hour and still nothing, so decide to walk the one and a half miles along country lanes to the main road that has a fifteen minute bus service back home.  No bus ever passed me on the way.  As this is a sort of community bus service (guessing its heavily subsidised), I really felt how isolated people without cars in the villages served must feel.  Oh, for some realtime info out there for that!

In my home city, Plymouth, we now have realtime tracking of buses, and you can check progress of the buses on your mobile.  Lots of bus stops also have indicator boards now, and I have found these to be very accurate. Late running services don't disappear off them, but show up as delayed by x minutes (and in very few cases, if cancelled altogether).

It's because the LA has money to waste, my local bus stop has had 7 new bus stop flags sited at it in the last 5 years including at one time 2 flags, one on the bus shelter itself and one on the adjacent street lamp standard.

In London there a few bus stops where my app will show me how long I will be waiting and I know at those stops I need to add 2 minutes to my waiting time. Not because of traffic, it's always like that. Other stops I use I know to be fairly accurate.

Observing it from the drivers seat, it has never worked 100%. Some buses weren't shown on it, which would lead to people walking away and using other means to travel. Some vehicles that weren't shown would be replaced with a time estimate which was normally the time of the nearest timing point. The bus company didn't seem too bothered by it not being accurate as, to begin with, they didn't have any control of it (this also meant buses turning short or journeys cancelled would continue to be shown) with a it's better than nothing attitude, even if it's wrong. The problem is, with technology, people begin to take the information as the gospel, when in reality, the paper timetables on the bus stops we're far more accurate. Many mistakes and confusion arise from inaccurate real time information, the most complicated situation is when buses are sharing the same bus stop to go both directions of the same route, Calcot Savacentre was a good example of this 

I have found the Swindon Bus app real times are pretty reliable.  Unfortunately they are confined to the app and don't appear on the bus stop displays so their availability is limited.

My beef is with termini (like Reading Station) and time stops. In general we are not interested when the bus arrives, but when it leaves. At Reading Station you can have three buses gong towards the hospital, so you get on the front bus and sit there like a lemon while the two behind leave.

The Bristol printed timetable has long been consigned to the "Fantasy Fiction" shelf of the library. The displays at bus stops give plenty of information, some of it accurate, which seems to mirror the app or vice versa.

I spent 3 weeks in Tenerife recently beforre it became unfashionable. The passage of buses into, out of and through major destinations, and especially Los Cristianos, is often hampered by heavy traffic and limited bus lanes, but the app seems remarkably accurate. For the local "guaguas", pronounced "Wah-wah" like the pedal, operated by Titsa (I know) it offers excellent information about what runs where and when, and how much it costs, even if it is a bit clunky until you get used to it.Someone should take a good look at it and figure out why it works better than Bristol's own. I'll volunteer once this current thing is over.

I've not had that problem recently, but I've worked out the rules for that bus stops as:
1. Ignore that display in the bus shelter, it often makes no sense.
2. But always ask the driver when they are leaving. That implies two more rules:
3. Never get on a bus with no driver in it.
4. Never get on a bus that isn't there, with or without a driver.

plus...
5. If all else fails, and it's not raining, walk - at least I know how long that takes.

This particular problem I raised many times with the company. The problem with the routes heading for the hospital (and those going to Whitley and University/Lower Earley) is that loading for the next journey occurs in St. Mary's Butts, and Friar Street with the RBH bound vehicles, before the previous journey has been completed. This never used to occur and I recall being given strict instructions that it was set down only at all town centre stops inbound, with the exception of cross town routes obviously. When the colour coding arrived wrong direction loading began to occur on the routes that would loop the town centre. This was because, unlike before colours, the buses would have multiple routes on their running cards and, upon arrival at the Station, would often become a different route. The seven or so different routes that pass RBH are all on separate rotas so they don't interact with each other, each route having different amounts of waiting time at the station hence why you could board the bus which arrives first, that already has people on but may not be the next to leave. Largely, the drivers on each route wouldn't know (or care) which was next to depart, they would merely be following the instructions of their particular vehicle. Equally, if you did care, you would be met with hostility by those you had picked up on the way to the station if you attempted to get them to swap buses at the station. This is the complicated result of letting people board where they please and I can't see the company ever being brave enough to tell passengers what to do, even if it is beneficial for the majority.

True story of the 376 to Wells from Bristol

Wanted to go to Glastonbury and arrived at three lamps bus stop.

Next 376 was a FIFTY minute wait.

No way says I,

its timetabled as every thirty minutes.

Waited for 20 minutes and hey ho a 376 arrives to Wells

Said to driver your bus is not shown on the departure board.

I know says he,I switched the GPS? off 

Truck drivers in America do that when they are on the fiddle.

Did it display x mins gradually reducing or show a fixed time before disappearing of the screen?

RTPI is reliant on a number of factors.  Accurate schedule data, gps tracking working, rural mobile signal to transmit the GPS positions and so on.

It counted down the minutes to departure time.

The metro in Prague had counters that started when the train pulled out of the station. At around 2:55, the next one appeared. I never saw it hit 3 minutes.

This type of clock was a benefit of living under the shadow of the Soviet Union. Quite common in Eastern bloc metro systems!

Public transport generally seems to benefit from a totalitarian government having been in power, it seems.

Public transport benefits from a utility, for the people approach perhaps.

I had an experience at Manchester Victoria in August 2018 when I was travelling to Rose Grove to take some “then and now” shots to commemorate 50 years since the end of BR steam.

The booked train, a through service from Southport to Blackburn via Manchester and Burnley Manchester Road, was stuck behind a signal failure at Wigan Wallgate which had blocked the line in both directions.

Local staff had rustled up a 2-car Pacer at Manchester to work the service on from there, but the automated system couldn’t handle this for some reason. The display board alternated between “On time” and “Cancelled” every couple of minute which confused the hell out of intending passengers,