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[email protected] · November 27th 10, 11:03 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

On Sat, 27 Nov 2010 12:38:34 -0600,
wrote:

I arrived at a bus stop in front of King's Cross station this morning
planning to catch a 45 or 46 to Grays Inn Road. The 63 also calls at
the same stop but my destination was further from Farringdon Road so it
seemed better to stick to the Grays Inn Road routes.

When I arrived the first two buses shown on the Countdown screen were a
45 and a 46 (or vice versa) due in 4 or 5 minutes. Then a 63 appeared
on the screen as "due" and disappeared again. A few minutes later a 63
bus did appear but wasn't showing on Countdown at all. Then a 45 showed
as due and disappeared without a bus turning up. No 45 or 46 bus came
but it showed several due in the next 5 minutes or so.

Then suddenly the screen changed, just after the 63 had left, with
three 45s or 46s due, but only in 12 minutes! Then a 45 appeared after
a couple of minutes with Countdown showing the next bus due in 10
minutes.

?Que?

Yes it can get confused. My guess is that because the 45 and 63 start
one stop earlier at St Pancras International there is something odd
about how it deals with reality against possibly using a scheduled
departure time (i.e. the timetable). I may, of course, be talking
complete nonsense!

I happened to see that the Countdown displays on Oxford Street outside
John Lewis were all happily displaying bus arrival times even though the
entire street was closed for the VIP event and no bus will turn up for
about another 2 hours!

The Cambridge real time bus information displays do distinguish real time
from timetable information which does reduce the confusion. Minutes to go
mean there is real time data, a clock time means it's just in the
timetable.

--
Colin Rosenstiel