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
 

I-Bus is now live
 

On Jul 6, 2:58 am, "John Rowland"
wrote:
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.

What's it got to do with the disabled? It's never very easy to keep
track of where you are on a moving bus, especially if it's after dark
or the bus is crowded or you're in an unfamiliar area without many
landmarks. A lot of my bus experiences have been not fun for exactly
this reason.

It sounds like the new system will let you just listen out for the
name of your stop, rather than peering through the window for clues.

U

--
http://londonconnections.blogspot.com

I-Bus is now live
 

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.


I've been on a W4 with announcements telling us where we are, they've
also been fitted with dot matrix style 'stopping' signs

I-Bus is now live
 

On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 04:21:25 -0700, Mr Thant
wrote:

It sounds like the new system will let you just listen out for the
name of your stop, rather than peering through the window for clues.

On a crowded 73 this evening, it was far easier watching the screens
to see if Euston was coming up rather than watching out of the window
(which I could not see) even though I know full well what Euston looks
like. It's also superb for tourists and others not familar with the
routes. It's taken a while but it's something I think should be a
legal requirement on every bus in the country, and it's one that's
been about in some form in Germany and Austria since at least 1998.

Some suggestions for improvement: include connection details "Change
here for routes 1, 2, 3 and the Bakerloo Line" and relevant network
disruption information on the second line rather than wasting it
saying "Bus Stopping".

But, all-in-all, a bloody good idea - only a pity it took them so long
to get there.

Neil

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

I-Bus is now live
 

On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 12:07:03 GMT, wrote:

But very annoying to have to have in your ears all day long like bus
drivers have a much better system would have been just illuminated
displays without the audio which gets to me even on my infrequent
journeys between Euston and Waterloo and back on the tube. I do find
it useful but would find just the display without the audio equally
so.

Yet the announcements provide a *massive* benefit to blind users,
making a service that must be very difficult to use become a lot
easier.

They aren't that annoying - no silly bing-bongs and no over-verbose
pointless[1] announcements like the "Bus stopping at next bus stop"
nonsense that came before it.

[1] Everybody knows that "ding" means the bus is stopping, and that
standing in the way of the doors is a bit silly.

Neil

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

I-Bus is now live
 

On Thu, 05 Jul 2007 23:46:00 GMT, wrote:

Must agree the announcements on my infrequent tube journeys get to me
but on the other hand if I was a bus driver in London and London being
full of tourists not having a clue of where they are I would get sick
of passengers asking me to tell them where to get of the bus or if the
bus goes by such a street or whatever .

Isn't that part of the bus drivers job? I certainly am happy to help my
passengers get off at the right stop.

--
jhk

I-Bus is now live
 

On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 09:18:04 -0000, Matthew Dickinson
wrote:

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.

How did you find about this as I can't see anything obvious on the TfL
website?

Any idea where you find the bus stop codes?

--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

I-Bus is now live
 

On 6 Jul, 22:52, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 09:18:04 -0000, Matthew Dickinson

wrote:
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.

How did you find about this as I can't see anything obvious on the TfL
website?

Any idea where you find the bus stop codes?

--
Paul C

Admits to working for London Underground!

The codes are available by using mobile.transportdirect.info and
entering likely stop names.
The SMS shortcode is the national one publicised at www.traveline.org.uk/txt.htm.I
have stepped through a few numbers in the 49000xxxx and the seem to be
alphabetical by spider maps (e.g Acton is 490000002A and Aldgate is
4900000003A) where A is the stop letter.

I-Bus is now live
 

On Sun, 08 Jul 2007 15:59:47 -0700, Matthew Dickinson
wrote:

On 6 Jul, 22:52, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Fri, 06 Jul 2007 09:18:04 -0000, Matthew Dickinson

wrote:
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.

How did you find about this as I can't see anything obvious on the TfL
website?

Any idea where you find the bus stop codes?

The codes are available by using mobile.transportdirect.info and
entering likely stop names.
The SMS shortcode is the national one publicised at www.traveline.org.uk/txt.htm.I
have stepped through a few numbers in the 49000xxxx and the seem to be
alphabetical by spider maps (e.g Acton is 490000002A and Aldgate is
4900000003A) where A is the stop letter.

Thanks for providing the info but none of it is working for me. I've
tried the transport direct look up - that doesn't work. Traveline does
not provide timetables with the stop lists for the London area - you
just get the TfL stop specific timetable. Even texting the codes you
have discovered just gets a default message back from the Traveline text
service. Shame :-(

--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

I-Bus is now live
 

On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 04:21:25AM -0700, Mr Thant wrote:

What's it got to do with the disabled? It's never very easy to keep
track of where you are on a moving bus, especially if it's after dark
or the bus is crowded

I manage it. Perhaps you're just thick.

or you're in an unfamiliar area without many
landmarks.

You have a point there, but London is replete with landmarks, and even
if you don't recognise them, asking the driver or another passenger to
tell you when to get off always seems to work for the tourist scum that
use my buses.

--
David Cantrell | top google result for "topless karaoke murders"

The Law of Daves: in any gathering of technical people, the
number of Daves will be greater than the number of women.

I-Bus is now live
 

On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 06:33:05PM +0000, Neil Williams wrote:

Yet the announcements provide a *massive* benefit to blind users,

Of whom there are approximately zero.

--
David Cantrell | Official London Perl Mongers Bad Influence

I caught myself pulling grey hairs out of my beard.
I'm definitely not going grey, but I am going vain.

I-Bus is now live
 

David Cantrell wrote:
On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 04:21:25AM -0700, Mr Thant wrote:

What's it got to do with the disabled? It's never very easy to keep
track of where you are on a moving bus, especially if it's after dark
or the bus is crowded

I manage it. Perhaps you're just thick.

or you're in an unfamiliar area without many
landmarks.

You have a point there, but London is replete with landmarks, and even
if you don't recognise them, asking the driver or another passenger to
tell you when to get off always seems to work for the tourist scum that
use my buses.

You seem to have a lot of contempt for your fellow passengers, unless
they use the buses exactly like you think they should.
--
Michael Hoffman

I-Bus is now live
 

David Cantrell wrote:

On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 06:33:05PM +0000, Neil Williams wrote:

Yet the announcements provide a *massive* benefit to blind users,

Of whom there are approximately zero.

Have you considered that the reason for that might be how incredibly
scary the use of a bus must be for them without the announcements, or
that once the announcements are provided on every bus we might see an
increase in them using buses?

Neil

I-Bus is now live
 

David Cantrell wrote:

tourist scum that
use my buses.

"This is a local bus for local people"? What utter nonsense.

A good and important part of IBus and the likes is to make buses
accessible to first-time users, tourists or not. It is a fine system
and I want to see it on every bus in the country as soon as humanly
possible.

Neil

I-Bus is now live
 

In message , David
Cantrell writes
On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 04:21:25AM -0700, Mr Thant wrote:

What's it got to do with the disabled? It's never very easy to keep
track of where you are on a moving bus, especially if it's after dark
or the bus is crowded

I manage it. Perhaps you're just thick.
Goodness. Perhaps I'm thick too, then. Despite being a professional
tour guide for both London and the Midlands, I often find myself not
quite sure where tops are for particular things and having them named an
announced is overall a Good Thing.

(To be fair, the repeated announcements probably will get on my nerves -
they do on Midland Metro and the Underground - but it's a worthwhile
worth it.)

or you're in an unfamiliar area without many
landmarks.

You have a point there, but London is replete with landmarks,
That rather depends where you are. Just as a solitary example, the
stops in Greenwich Town Centre don't have views of the observatory and
those around Victoria don't scream "Buckingham Palace". The latter is
now included on announcements for Green Park Station, for example.

And of you're in Croydon, Harrow, Thamesmead or Ealing it's a very
different story anyway.

and even
if you don't recognise them, asking the driver or another passenger to
tell you when to get off always seems to work for the tourist scum that
use my buses.
My clients look forward to meeting you on their next journey! :-)
Where do you drive?
--
Ian Jelf, MITG
Birmingham, UK

Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England
http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk

I-Bus is now live
 

On Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 08:34:13AM -0700, Neil Williams wrote:
David Cantrell wrote:
On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 06:33:05PM +0000, Neil Williams wrote:
Yet the announcements provide a *massive* benefit to blind users,
Of whom there are approximately zero.
Have you considered that the reason for that might be how incredibly
scary the use of a bus must be for them without the announcements ...

It's a side-effect of there being approximately zero blind people at
all. Oh I know that there are hundreds of thousands of "legally blind"
people, but nigh-on all of them can see perfectly well enough to use a
bus.

--
David Cantrell | Cake Smuggler Extraordinaire

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life
-- Samuel Johnson

I-Bus is now live
 

David Cantrell wrote:
On Thu, Jul 12, 2007 at 08:34:13AM -0700, Neil Williams wrote:
David Cantrell wrote:
On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 06:33:05PM +0000, Neil Williams wrote:
Yet the announcements provide a *massive* benefit to blind users,
Of whom there are approximately zero.
Have you considered that the reason for that might be how
incredibly scary the use of a bus must be for them without the
announcements ...

It's a side-effect of there being approximately zero blind people at
all.

Rubbish. On 31 March 2006 there were 152,455 registered blind people in
England, of which 28,835 were in London.

Oh I know that there are hundreds of thousands of "legally
blind" people, but nigh-on all of them can see perfectly well
enough to use a bus.

To be registered blind, you have to be assessed by a consultant
ophthalmologist. Registered blind people would not be able to see the
location names on bus stops, for example, and cannot see "perfectly well
enough" to do anything that requires eyesight.

Is there some reason why you have this callous indifference to the
problems that tens of thousands of blind people face every day?
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

I-Bus is now live
 

In message , Richard J.
writes
Registered blind people would not be able to see the location names on
bus stops, for example, and cannot see "perfectly well enough" to do
anything that requires eyesight.

As an aside, Centro or Travel West Midlands used to have the bus numbers
in VERY LARGE typeface on a bus stop in the Harborne area of Birmingham
which was near to a school for the blind.

Funnily enough, I noticed only the other day that they'd gone, replaced
by a new standard "n West Midlands" bus stop. A pity that a thoughtful
little local improvement like that was finished by corporate
standardisation.
--
Ian Jelf, MITG
Birmingham, UK

Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England
http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk

I-Bus is now live
 

On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 11:18:12PM +0000, Richard J. wrote:
David Cantrell wrote:
It's a side-effect of there being approximately zero blind people at
all.
Rubbish. On 31 March 2006 there were 152,455 registered blind people in
England, of which 28,835 were in London.

So that's between 0.3% and 0.4% of the population. Like I said,
approximately zero.

Oh I know that there are hundreds of thousands of "legally
blind" people, but nigh-on all of them can see perfectly well
enough to use a bus.
To be registered blind, you have to be assessed by a consultant
ophthalmologist. Registered blind people would not be able to see the
location names on bus stops, for example, and cannot see "perfectly well
enough" to do anything that requires eyesight.

Tell that to my registered blind mother who manages to navigate her way
around London and the rest of the country on foot and using public
transport just fine. She manages plenty of other stuff that requires
eyesight too. Embroidery, for example, and reading.

Or perhaps she's using echo location? I'm sure you know better than I
do.

Is there some reason why you have this callous indifference to the
problems that tens of thousands of blind people face every day?

When did you stop beating your wife?

My knowledge of just how much many "blind" people can actually see comes,
funnily enough, from the RNIB a few years ago, when they ran a campaign
to persuade people that there were lots more blind people than everyone
thought and so we should all give them lots of money. What the campaign
actually convinced me of is that most blind people aren't blind.

On Sat, Jul 14, 2007 at 07:03:56AM +0100, Ian Jelf wrote:

As an aside, Centro or Travel West Midlands used to have the bus numbers
in VERY LARGE typeface on a bus stop in the Harborne area of Birmingham
which was near to a school for the blind.

There seems to be some special signage around Old St and Moorfields eye
hospital too. Last time I visited the route from the station to the
hospital was marked by a bright green line on the pavement which I
thought was a very good idea.

--
David Cantrell | A machine for turning tea into grumpiness

When one has bathed in Christ there is no need to bathe a second time
-- St. Jerome, on why washing is a vile pagan practice
in a letter to Heliodorus, 373 or 374 AD

I-Bus is now live
 

On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 09:45:08AM +0100, Ian Jelf wrote:
In message , David
Cantrell writes
if you don't recognise them, asking the driver or another passenger to
tell you when to get off always seems to work for the tourist scum that
use my buses.
My clients look forward to meeting you on their next journey! :-)
Where do you drive?

I drive all over the place, although not in a bus.

--
David Cantrell | A machine for turning tea into grumpiness

I don't do .INI, .BAT, or .SYS files. I don't assign apps to files.
I don't configure peripherals or networks before using them. I have
a computer to do all that. I have a Macintosh, not a hobby.
-- Fritz Anderson

I-Bus is now live
 

David Cantrell wrote:
On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 11:18:12PM +0000, Richard J. wrote:
David Cantrell wrote:
It's a side-effect of there being approximately zero blind people
at all.
Rubbish. On 31 March 2006 there were 152,455 registered blind
people in England, of which 28,835 were in London.

So that's between 0.3% and 0.4% of the population. Like I said,
approximately zero.

How very caring of you.

plonk

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

I-Bus is now live
 

On Mon, 16 Jul 2007 12:42:21 +0100, David Cantrell
wrote:

My knowledge of just how much many "blind" people can actually see comes,
funnily enough, from the RNIB a few years ago, when they ran a campaign
to persuade people that there were lots more blind people than everyone
thought and so we should all give them lots of money. What the campaign
actually convinced me of is that most blind people aren't blind.

This may well be the case, but it helps, and replaces the service of
shouting out stops that used to be performed by conductors.

Like many other accessibility improvements such as ramps and lifts, it
also helps others. In this case, these would be tourists, new bus
users, those who aren't familiar with the area etc. As bus use needs
to be encouraged over car use, anything that makes the bus less scary
for such people is a good thing, and the announcements are short so
not really disruptive at all.

Neil

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

I-Bus is now live
 

On 6 Jul, 08:55, Paul Corfield wrote:

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.

Since the W4 is mentioned here... how does i-bus handle hail and ride
sections?