Whoosh

[whole diary]

[stuving]

This service may not deserve to be tagged as "smoke and mirrors", but labelling it "revolutionary" does!

Announced on GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)'s web site:

22 Jun 2023


Rail tech revolution on track as Great Western Railway trials Whoosh’s real-time journey dashboard for customers

Great Western Railway has embarked on a revolutionary journey with the trial of new software that will allow customers to see real-time train service information.

The four-month trial of the digital platform from rail tech developer Whoosh began at the start of May and allows customers to see real-time journey information for the train they are on as well as real-time rail and travel information for every station in the country.

The digital platform, which is being trialled on board three trains, and also at Patchway and Newton Abbot stations, is accessed by scanning bespoke station and at-seat QR^▸ (QR Code - Quick Response code (2D bar code)) codes.

Customers simply scan a QR code to unlock a wealth of relevant travel information, featuring station info, onward journey planning and Welsh language options.

Whoosh’s recently patented ‘Tell Us’ functionality also enables contextualised fault reporting by passengers and staff onboard.

Whoosh already operates several successful journey information services for other UK^▸ (United Kingdom) transport operators. The tech company teamed up with Network Rail last year to provide personalised information across the UK’s largest stations...

Anyone been hanging about Newton Abbot or Patchway recently?

 

[Timmer]

Indeed. Labelling “revolutionary” might be pushing it somewhat when passengers, and also staff, have had access to sites such as Real Time Trains and Open Train Times for a good few years now.

Still, providing passengers, who may not be familiar with sites that provide live train data, with easy access to the latest info on their train is a good thing so should be welcomed.

[grahame]

This service may not deserve to be tagged as "smoke and mirrors", but labelling it "revolutionary" does!

Perhaps what's revolutionary is trusting the masses of passengers officially with this information - and that's good news IMHO^▸ ('in my humble opinion'). Just provided GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) or GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) don't try to make the base data proprietary and charge for access to it.

[WelshBluebird]

Not sure I'm a fan of it seemingly only being able to be accessed via scanning a QR^▸ (QR Code - Quick Response code (2D bar code)) code.
Some of the information provided would be useful before you get to the station too, and whilst those of us in the know can still access that via existing platforms and services, it seems a bit of a miss to not just bake it into the existing GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) app or similar!

[stuving]

Not sure I'm a fan of it seemingly only being able to be accessed via scanning a QR^▸ (QR Code - Quick Response code (2D bar code)) code.
Some of the information provided would be useful before you get to the station too, and whilst those of us in the know can still access that via existing platforms and services, it seems a bit of a miss to not just bake it into the existing GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) app or similar!

This is a four-month trial - so maybe they will if they decide the idea a goer.

[Ralph Ayres]

The National Rail website also already lets you see live running info, though it's a little buried. I suspect the only revolutionary aspect of this one is telling people about it and making it easy to find, though I suspect having scanned the QR^▸ (QR Code - Quick Response code (2D bar code)) code you still have to jump through a few hoops to get to the display shown in the article.

[Richard Fairhurst]

Indeed. Labelling “revolutionary” might be pushing it somewhat when passengers, and also staff, have had access to sites such as Real Time Trains and Open Train Times for a good few years now.

This is quite interesting (well, to people like me ).

The hard part is automatically identifying what train you're on. In theory you can do "map matching", which takes your GPS position and current timestamp, compares it to a database of railway geometries and current train running, and gets the result from there. But it's pretty complex. There's a startup called Signalbox (https://www.signalbox.io) who are doing interesting stuff in this space.

I wonder if Whoosh are short-circuiting this by using a QR^▸ (QR Code - Quick Response code (2D bar code)) code. If the QR code is distinct for the train in question (say, 800316 or whatever), then the app simply needs to look up the current running for that unit, without faffing with map matching at all.

[ChrisB]

In the photo at the top of this thread, you scan the seat back QR^▸ (QR Code - Quick Response code (2D bar code)) code to open the app. so yes re QR code.

[eightonedee]

There's a much better solution for information about the train you are on - simply put it on screens in the train itself! This is what I saw on a refurbished West Midlands train earlier this year, and have also seen on some trains in the Netherlands - in both cases a display showing the remaining calling points and estimated time of arrival at each.

No need for a working smartphone, scanning a QR^▸ (QR Code - Quick Response code (2D bar code)) code or similar!