I-Bus is now live
 

Well Tottenham Garage has clearly gone live judging from my ride on the
123 this morning. I never used the 149 trial buses so this is all new
to me.

As I boarded I heard a noise and thought "what's that?". As I sat down
I noticed the top line of the new two line displays was now functional
and as we moved down the road the display and speaker announced
"Walthamstow Police Station" in a female voice.

When we stopped and the front doors opened we got a display of "Route
123 to Wood Green" and an announcement of "Rooooooute pause One
pause Two short pause Thhhhhhreee pause to Wood Greeen". The
poor lady seems to have trouble with her routes and numbers but can
manage to say all the stop names reasonably well. As we moved along all
of the stops were announced in good time and differences in distances
between stops seemed to have been handled quite well.

If a bell push is pressed then you get the bell and bus stopping
display as normal but nothing else - I had half expected "Bus Stopping"
to be announced. If only the exit doors are opened you get no "Route
123" message so I assume that the message is supposed to assure blind
people as they board. However if there is a long queue of people anyone
after the third or fourth boarder will not hear this thus negating the
benefit of what I assume the announcement is for. There are no "doors
opening" or "doors closing" announcements as have been in use on some
First Group buses for a long while.

I suspect that if I was a bus driver I would be at my wit's end having
heard "Bus 123 to Wood Green (or wherever)" several hundred times
during my shift. I was certainly getting annoyed after a 12 minute ride
and we didn't stop to pick up at every stop.

I will say that some stop names are not very logical - for example the
stop that you would use for Seven Sisters Station is called Tottenham
Town Hall. Now to be fair the Town Hall is not far from the stop but the
area is better known as Seven Sisters and is recognised either by the
station or the Tescos supermarket.

The other mild disappointment was the lack of interchange information
at key points. While I recognise the problems where the bus network is
dense or there are overlaps I had hoped that somewhere like Blackhorse
Road Station might have had an announcement that said "Change for Tube
and National Rail services and also buses 158 and 230". You can't do
that for every stop (e.g. where the 123 overlaps with the 230) but key
points like stations or bus stations should warrant a bit more info in
my opinion.

On the whole I thought the stop announcements / displays were good and
the GPS element was impressive. The repeated route announcements need
more work in my view. Not so good was to get off at Seven Sisters (oops
sorry Tottenham Town Hall) to find the Countdown display showing nothing
at all for northbound buses. I will be interested to see if I notice an
improvement in reliability given the controllers should know exactly
where all the buses are.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

I-Bus is now live
 

Paul Corfield wrote:
Not so good was to get off at Seven Sisters (oops sorry Tottenham Town Hall) to find the
Countdown display showing nothing at all for northbound buses.

So the Countdown displays are being retained but will be updated with
more accurate information. I was hoping they would be replaced by a
better system as reliability of those displays is an issue if my
experience is anything to go by.

ESB

I-Bus is now live
 

On Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:09:21 +0100, Ernst S Blofeld
wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:
Not so good was to get off at Seven Sisters (oops sorry Tottenham Town Hall) to find the
Countdown display showing nothing at all for northbound buses.

So the Countdown displays are being retained but will be updated with
more accurate information. I was hoping they would be replaced by a
better system as reliability of those displays is an issue if my
experience is anything to go by.

To be honest I'm not 100% sure what is happening with the current
Countdown displays. I had assumed that they would be retained as we
have had some local stops equipped with them within the last year when
I-Bus was being developed. If the old style units were to be replaced
why persist with an installation programme?

To be honest I'm far more interested to know if my two local stops are
to get displays or not as there is supposed to be an expansion of the
bus stop displays.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

I-Bus is now live
 

On Thu, 05 Jul 2007 23:12:40 +0100, Paul Corfield
wrote:
To be honest I'm not 100% sure what is happening with the current
Countdown displays. I had assumed that they would be retained as we
have had some local stops equipped with them within the last year when
I-Bus was being developed. If the old style units were to be replaced
why persist with an installation programme?

I worked on this once... The old displays are connected by ISDN or
sometimes analogue modem, and that represents quite a cost. Siemens
will have proposed what to do about that, it *may* of course be
cheaper in the long run to replace them rather than adapt them for the
new system.

To be honest I'm far more interested to know if my two local stops are
to get displays or not as there is supposed to be an expansion of the
bus stop displays.

And round here, they're not always at the obvious stops and are a bit
free-range too, one recently disappeared from a nearby (unsuitable)
stop. A bit surprising, given the cost of moving the phone lines
around. Transdev say they're next in line to get their buses fitted,
so I look forward to seeing what it's like!

Richard.

I-Bus is now live
 

Paul Corfield wrote:

I suspect that if I was a bus driver I would be at my wit's end having
heard "Bus 123 to Wood Green (or wherever)" several hundred times
during my shift. I was certainly getting annoyed after a 12 minute
ride and we didn't stop to pick up at every stop.

How old fashioned, Paul! The disabled are now the master race, and we are
their chattels. If you dare to suggest that non-disabled people matter, LU's
Disability Unit will have you reprogrammed.

I-Bus is now live
 

On Thu, 05 Jul 2007 20:22:28 +0100, Paul Corfield
wrote:

Well Tottenham Garage has clearly gone live judging from my ride on the
123 this morning. I never used the 149 trial buses so this is all new
to me.

Noticed it on a 73 yesterday morning as well.

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.

I-Bus is now live
 

Interesting... and they run near me, too! Wonder if I'll be hearing
and seeing this on the 341 any time soon. The 123 runs near me, too,
but I bet it's only installed on a few of the buses there?

I-Bus is now live
 

On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 07:44:48 -0000, sweek
wrote:

Interesting... and they run near me, too! Wonder if I'll be hearing
and seeing this on the 341 any time soon. The 123 runs near me, too,
but I bet it's only installed on a few of the buses there?

It's being done by garage - the 123 runs from Tottenham so all buses on
the route are using the new system. The 76, 243, 41, W4 are other routes
from Tottenham as well as some 73s (some run from Lea Valley garage).
The 341 is run from Northumberland Park - don't know where that is in
the installation programme.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

I-Bus is now live
 

On 6 Jul, 08:55, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 07:44:48 -0000, sweek
wrote:

Interesting... and they run near me, too! Wonder if I'll be hearing
and seeing this on the 341 any time soon. The 123 runs near me, too,
but I bet it's only installed on a few of the buses there?

It's being done by garage - the 123 runs from Tottenham so all buses on
the route are using the new system. The 76, 243, 41, W4 are other routes
from Tottenham as well as some 73s (some run from Lea Valley garage).
The 341 is run from Northumberland Park - don't know where that is in
the installation programme.
--
Paul C

Admits to working for London Underground!

Departure boards by text are now available by texting 84268 with the
bus stop code.

e.g. 490000152G is stop G at Mornington Crescent Station.

Unfortunately the codes seem to be spider map related, and are not
related to any of the numbers on the stops.

I-Bus is now live