In message , at 23:12:16 on
Thu, 6 Dec 2018, Richard remarked:
Its a reasonably important service

I'm not convinced it is. While it's very nice to know when the next bus
is along the vast majority of London bus routes are frequent enough that
you can just wait for a while for the next to turn up.

Not essential, but I think a more important requirement of the system
is for the bus operators and TfL to know where the buses are. And if
the buses are also using O2... Certainly there was no real-time for
my bus this morning.

It's unfortunate that the case-study the BBC News has chosen for this
outage is the TfL bus information - perhaps because one of their
journalists noticed it at first hand, or maybe they think their readers
could relate to it.

In truth it's one of the least important services to be affected by the
outage, which has the potential (in a future scenario) to ground half
the country's self-driving cars, or cause half of commuters to be unable
to use their m-ticketing application.
--
Roland Perry

I have heard that "occasionally the buses get calls over the radio from PPI companies and the like using auto-diallers!"

On Fri, 7 Dec 2018 07:07:59 +0000
Roland Perry wrote:
In truth it's one of the least important services to be affected by the
outage, which has the potential (in a future scenario) to ground half
the country's self-driving cars, or cause half of commuters to be unable
to use their m-ticketing application.

Lets hope car manufacturers arn't so stupid as to require an always-on
connection for self driving cars otherwise someone could just sit on a
motorway bridge with a jammer and cause chaos.

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 23:12:16 on
Thu, 6 Dec 2018, Richard remarked:
Its a reasonably important service

I'm not convinced it is. While it's very nice to know when the next bus
is along the vast majority of London bus routes are frequent enough that
you can just wait for a while for the next to turn up.

Not essential, but I think a more important requirement of the system
is for the bus operators and TfL to know where the buses are. And if
the buses are also using O2... Certainly there was no real-time for
my bus this morning.

It's unfortunate that the case-study the BBC News has chosen for this
outage is the TfL bus information - perhaps because one of their
journalists noticed it at first hand, or maybe they think their readers
could relate to it.

In truth it's one of the least important services to be affected by the
outage, which has the potential (in a future scenario) to ground half
the country's self-driving cars, or cause half of commuters to be unable
to use their m-ticketing application.

Do any self-driving cars depend, or plan to depend, on continuous, reliable
access to a data network? It sounds most improbable. How would they
operate at all on remote roads with no signal?

They will need periodic access to update their mapping data, report back to
base, or update software, but shouldn't need continuous access.

In message , at 11:04:05 on Fri, 7 Dec 2018,
Recliner remarked:

Do any self-driving cars depend, or plan to depend, on continuous, reliable
access to a data network? It sounds most improbable. How would they
operate at all on remote roads with no signal?

They will need periodic access to update their mapping data, report back to
base, or update software, but shouldn't need continuous access.

It's been said that if in a situation of gridlock on a stretch of road,
the cars would communicate with each other to decide a priority to
proceed.

That's a more immediately real time situation than still importantly
attempting to avoid obstructions occurring at short notice such as RTAs,
and this week Network Rail closing the A10 level crossing at Littleport
for hours, so they could get machinery in place to fix a broken rail.
--
Roland Perry

On Fri, 7 Dec 2018 13:07:53 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 11:04:05 on Fri, 7 Dec 2018,
Recliner remarked:

Do any self-driving cars depend, or plan to depend, on continuous, reliable
access to a data network? It sounds most improbable. How would they
operate at all on remote roads with no signal?

They will need periodic access to update their mapping data, report back to
base, or update software, but shouldn't need continuous access.

It's been said that if in a situation of gridlock on a stretch of road,
the cars would communicate with each other to decide a priority to
proceed.

Would they use the phone network or, much more probably, some sort of
short range digital radio?


That's a more immediately real time situation than still importantly
attempting to avoid obstructions occurring at short notice such as RTAs,
and this week Network Rail closing the A10 level crossing at Littleport
for hours, so they could get machinery in place to fix a broken rail.

I wonder if that sort of information could not also be broadcast like
traffic alerts are now?

In message , at 14:24:56 on
Fri, 7 Dec 2018, Recliner remarked:
It's been said that if in a situation of gridlock on a stretch of road,
the cars would communicate with each other to decide a priority to
proceed.

Would they use the phone network or, much more probably, some sort of
short range digital radio?

Local chatter on bluetooth? How would each vehicle authenticate itself
sufficiently well to act on its own initiative, if the ultimate control
was supposed to be in the [national] cloud?

That's a more immediately real time situation than still importantly
attempting to avoid obstructions occurring at short notice such as RTAs,
and this week Network Rail closing the A10 level crossing at Littleport
for hours, so they could get machinery in place to fix a broken rail.

I wonder if that sort of information could not also be broadcast like
traffic alerts are now?

Using what radio spectrum? Not O2 yesterday, obviously.
--
Roland Perry

On Thu, Dec 06, 2018 at 03:52:18PM +0000, wrote:

Screens which normally display the predicted arrival time of buses
across the capital are now blank.
Its a reasonably important service so having dual sims should really
have been in the design.

The next bus display screens really aren't that important. The buses
will still run without them, and they have big signs on the front
telling you what route they're running on and where they're going, so
passengers can still get to their destinations.

More important is the data link from bus to HQ so that HQ knows where
they are. That apparently went down too, and without that info the bus
service would have been a bit less efficiently managed. But only a bit.

--
David Cantrell | even more awesome than a panda-fur coat

Support terrierism! Adopt a dog today!

On Fri, Dec 07, 2018 at 07:07:59AM +0000, Roland Perry wrote:

In truth it's one of the least important services to be affected by the
outage, which has the potential (in a future scenario) to ground half
the country's self-driving cars, or cause half of commuters to be unable
to use their m-ticketing application.

Those would be the same commuters who can't show their tickets when the
train is in the middle of ruralistan. A problem that I have literally
never heard of.

My own experience of using such things is that you always have the
option to download the ticket to your device.

No doubt you'll now come up with some weird edge case, but in that case
I would assume that ticket inspectors would just wave people through if
they know that there's an outage.

--
David Cantrell

On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 10:00:31 +0000
David Cantrell wrote:
On Thu, Dec 06, 2018 at 03:52:18PM +0000, wrote:

Screens which normally display the predicted arrival time of buses
across the capital are now blank.
Its a reasonably important service so having dual sims should really
have been in the design.

The next bus display screens really aren't that important. The buses
will still run without them, and they have big signs on the front
telling you what route they're running on and where they're going, so
passengers can still get to their destinations.

Its pretty useful to know if the next bus is 20 mins away and you could
walk to your destination faster. I've done that on a number of occasions.