On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 20:59:08 +0000, Neil Williams
wrote:

David Bradley wrote:

The information, to which reference has been made, that would be
really useful is what is happening to any further transport system
that passengers intend to change into next. Thus a display on a bus on
an appropriate route for what is happening for example on main line
rail at Euston ,or the Northern Line at Oval, or Croydon Tramlink at
Addington Village or even another bus route at Camberwell Green would
be very useful to passengers who intended to continue their journeys
via one of those modes.

Perhaps. On smaller networks, though, it strikes me that the easy solution
to bringing disruptions to passenger attention has been missed. Many buses
are fitted with radio equipment, which could be hooked up to a PA system on
the bus for very little money. Announcements regarding service disruption
and similar news could easily be transmitted to the whole network for no
greater cost than it can at present be transmitted to the driver only.

Hamburg's U-Bahn system has such an "on-board long-line PA" facility, which
is quite well-used to broadcast disruption information to passengers on its
trains. I'm surprised I've never seen it applied to buses - certainly in
London, where "connection" isn't a dirty word like it is in so many other
places.

Neil

The problem with any communication system primarily intended for the
driver is that you would require to arrange switching for messages so
that the driver only got the operational ones and the passengers those
intended for them. That would have to be done manually by the driver
(probably not appreciated by either the DfT or the T&GWU) or you would
need some clever recognition system that picked up a code in the
message and did the switching.

The latter option should be quite possible but would, I suspect, not
be a cheap option as a retro-fit on vehicles that were already fiited
with a radio system. You then still have to deal with the bandwidth
issue. A small number of urgent messages (most of which are sent out
as general calls to everyone) represents a very different level of
usage to specific information to individual vehicles on a regular
basis.

At the end of the day, as always is the case in all aspects of life,
you not only have to have the technology to do what you want, but you
also have to have the resources (usually cash) as well.

David Bradley on behalf of a friend