Greater Anglia New Passenger Information Screens

gingerheid · 29 Nov 2019

There also seems to be a problem with the information system behind the new screens. They are frequently announcing "the train at platform X" that hasn't yet arrived at platform X, and it doesn't seem to be completely capable of recognising that if the incoming train is 40m late, the outbound train isn't leaving on time.

RailUK Forums

jon0844 · 29 Nov 2019

gingerheid said:
There also seems to be a problem with the information system behind the new screens. They are frequently announcing "the train at platform X" that hasn't yet arrived at platform X, and it doesn't seem to be completely capable of recognising that if the incoming train is 40m late, the outbound train isn't leaving on time.

That reminds me that the other thing I noticed was trains still showing on the screens some minutes after it had left.

Also, at Cambridge, with many trains splitting and joining the screens should be capable of explaining what's happening or going to happen. Lots of people panic when the doors are locked on a 387 because another unit is about to join up. The driver tells people on the train, but platform staff must have to constantly deal with angry passengers (and tourists). Sure, they might not read the screens but many people do - and I'd say more likely tourists.

arb · 30 Nov 2019

It also seems like the new screens (at Cambridge and Ely at least) can't cope with trains that are terminating at a platform and then going out of service. They continue to show the next departure available to passengers whilst the arrival that is going out of service is still sitting at the platform, leading to people trying to board it and staff continually having to stop them.

I first noticed this a few weeks ago whilst waiting for the last train of the day from Cambridge to Ely (00:08) - a terminating Thameslink train arrived at 23:54 and was still being advertised as the 00:08, causing many people, some having had quite a bit to drink, to try and board it. I noticed this one in particular because some of the extra security staff they have on Cambridge platform late at night on Fridays/Saturdays were not explaining this particularly well to some of the "merrier" passengers (e.g. "you should know it's not actually the 00:08 because it isn't 00:08 yet") and I was worried something might kick off as a result.

But then having seen it once I'm now seeing it all the time: the 23:54 arrival in Cambridge that I first saw is definitely not a one-off, and I see the same thing regularly with 09:22 and 18:41 arrivals in Ely, none of which I ever see shown as "this train is not in service". There are other times when I've seen it, but the three I've quoted are the ones that I've seen the most often.

Ianno87 · 30 Nov 2019

jon0844 said:
That reminds me that the other thing I noticed was trains still showing on the screens some minutes after it had left.

Also, at Cambridge, with many trains splitting and joining the screens should be capable of explaining what's happening or going to happen. Lots of people panic when the doors are locked on a 387 because another unit is about to join up. The driver tells people on the train, but platform staff must have to constantly deal with angry passengers (and tourists). Sure, they might not read the screens but many people do - and I'd say more likely tourists.

I think that's a case where if you try to explain what's going on too much, it'll just add confusion to what's going on, not reduce it. Keep it simple, especially where non-English first languages are involved.

I rarely if ever see people getting actually angry about it at Cambridge.

Problem will reduce anyway once King's Lynn can go 8-car.

F Great Eastern · 1 Dec 2019

Sensible use of screens at Norwich tonight, have two screens next to each other, showing the same thing, flicking between page 1 and 2, showing the same page at same time as each other, rather than one showing one page and one the other.

MikeWM · 2 Dec 2019

This morning at Ely had a good example of how poor these new screens are at giving accurate information.

The 0951 to Liverpool Lime Street usually arrives into platform 3, then the 0948 to Kings Cross arrives (and departs) from platform 2.

This morning however, on arriving at Ely, there was an EMR in platform 2. Manual announcements said the Kings Cross would arrive on platform 3, which it then did.

Did the screens show this change? Nope - up until after the Kings Cross service left, they continued to say that platform 2 was the Kings Cross and platform 3 was the Liverpool.

This is actively unhelpful and clearly needs sorting.

MikeWM · 6 Dec 2019

Same tonight at Ely, with fairly major disruption due to the GA meltdown, GN still not managing to have enough drivers despite having had the franchise for over 5 years, and a person hit by a train somewhere around Stevenage.

Platform 2 showed a train to Stansted when actually it was for Norwich. Platform 3 showed the Norwich, but the train there was for King's Cross.

Actively unhelpful. Until they can get the information updating correctly during disruption, they'd be better just being switched off

ashkeba · 6 Dec 2019

Bletchleyite said:
As a side note, the UI design on that is very poor. Why flag "on time" with yellow? It should be flagged with green. A short delay would be flagged yellow, and a long delay or cancellation red.

"On time" is yellow instead of green or just regular white on black. There's far too much yellow on the screen in normal operation anyway. Could they not pick a highlight colour that didn't mean a warning?
Delayed is orange instead of yellow. OK.
Cancelled is pink instead of red. WTF?

This system seems designed by fashionistas instead of railway people. One who hates passengers, too.
I hope they fix this awful colouring bug.

F Great Eastern · 6 Dec 2019

If you wanted something by Railway people with decades of proven systems up and down the country you would go to Infotec like the vast majority of operators do and pretty much all major stations in England and most of GA stations originally had.

They didn't, they went to another company which I presume was cheaper and there is far less attention to detail with more of a focus on looking nice and less on practicalities and everyday use and information provision.

I'm sure the screens can be improved though and there are software updates to deal with these things, but in many stations they've replaced LED screens which were more functional and geared up to passenger and railway needs, even if they didn't have nice colour displays, they were reliable and informative and could deal with anything the railway threw at them and that is vital.

ashkeba · 6 Dec 2019

F Great Eastern said:
I'm sure the screens can be improved though and there are software updates to deal with these things, but in many stations they've replaced LED screens which were more functional and geared up to passenger and railway needs, even if they didn't have nice colour displays, they were reliable and informative and could deal with anything the railway threw at them and that is vital.

GN have also replaced their LED displays at Cambridge area stations but with new white LED displays that every few minutes hide all train details with full screen animated announcements. What was wrong with scrolling announcements on the third line instead of the 2nd train? I wonder who makes those annoying ones.

Reesh_hill · 6 Dec 2019

Got them at Whittlesford Parkway, they replaced nice big dot matrix screens with tiny lcd screen you cannot read more 2m away with really small text on them. Much worse than the old ones

py_megapixel · 8 Dec 2019

F Great Eastern said:
Sensible use of screens at Norwich tonight, have two screens next to each other, showing the same thing, flicking between page 1 and 2, showing the same page at same time as each other, rather than one showing one page and one the other.

Sarcasm?
If not, wouldn't it make sense to have one side displaying page 1 and one side displaying page 2?

F Great Eastern · 8 Dec 2019

py_megapixel said:
Sarcasm?
If not, wouldn't it make sense to have one side displaying page 1 and one side displaying page 2?

Yep, it should be

It's like at Ipswich you have three screens before the barriers now.

First screen is divided into two and shows the next two trains
Second screen is divided into two and shows the third and fourth trains
Third screen is divided into the fifth trains and a list of the first five trains.

You'd think it would be sensible for the list of trains to either be for arrivals or trains after the next five which are already displayed but alas not and instead you get wasted screen space showing the same information that is already up there.

That's before we take into account delayed trains vanishing, people boarding wrong trains because the wrong train is advertised and all of the other problems going on. This system may look nicer than the one it replaced, but is far less sophisticated and able to deal with daily events, requirements, incidents and the day to day running of the railways.

py_megapixel · 10 Dec 2019

Are Greater Anglia actually installing these displays, are they specified by GA and installed by Network Rail etc.? Who's paying for them?

I was under the impression that Network Rail were responsible for CIS at stations.

F Great Eastern · 10 Dec 2019

They've appalling.

At Ipswich tonight the sheer amount of animations on the screens in the booking hall was very visually disturbing. There's no need to keep animating the calling points over and over again and doing wipe effects to constantly reload the same screen. It's flashy for flashy sake.

Then you have the table of departure screens in booking hall after barrier that have so much description text on them they can only fit three services on at a time compared to the old one that could do eight.

Thankfully there are still old screens on some of the platforms that show more relevant information, less guff and no pointless animations that distract from the information. These new screens are very much style over substance but that's GA all over. Look at Thameslink for a similar LCD based system which places far more value on information than fancy animations.

gingerheid · 11 Dec 2019

Hmm...

F Great Eastern · 11 Dec 2019

So was it platform 1 or 3B in the end?

Those walls of text take up so much room that sometimes even on the table of departures screens you can only have 3 services listed which is useless. The old screens just had a short sentence of description text and therefore could hold far more with the longer text scrolling on the platform screens.

The description text I think may also be manually typed because I've noticed quite a few typos, grammar errors and spelling mistakes in the past which I've never seen on a screen before which leads me to believe it's not coming from the main feed.

Edit: And there's a typo in that one too 'platfrom'

arb · 11 Dec 2019

Ely tonight, approximately 18:40. Two Greater Anglia trains double-parked in platform 2, with the screens claiming it was a CrossCountry to Stansted. One Great Northern train parked in platform 3, with the screens claiming it was East Midlands to Norwich. Staff desperately making manual "do not board the train" announcements but being talked over by the automated announcements. Passengers looking thoroughly confused and asking each other if anybody knew what was going where.

gingerheid · 11 Dec 2019

F Great Eastern said:
So was it platform 1 or 3B in the end?

4, of course.

At which point the text was updated to "This train will now leave from platform 4B. Train at far end of platform 1".

As has always been happening its presence at the platform was announced well before it arrived, and after it left late I got a journey check update saying that it would now leave on time.

Definitely a few bugs left in the system!

F Great Eastern · 11 Dec 2019

gingerheid said:
4, of course.

At which point the text was updated to "This train will now leave from platform 4B. Train at far end of platform 1".

As has always been happening its presence at the platform was announced well before it arrived, and after it left late I got a journey check update saying that it would now leave on time.

Definitely a few bugs left in the system!

It's noticeable in Ipswich where there are a mixture of old screens and new ones, that the old ones are more accurate, more informative and tend to not be lagged and show more relevant information and less distractions and irrelevant stuff.

I note today they've errected two right outside the entrance of the station attached to the roof at Ipswich, but they're turned off.

F Great Eastern · 12 Dec 2019

Screens in Ipswich departure hall are pathetic.

Just been past them with one train flicking from cancelled to on time and back constantly and three of the five boards showing the same train and the next train out not even showing.

The roll out of these should be halted.

MikeWM · 12 Dec 2019

arb said:
Ely tonight, approximately 18:40. Two Greater Anglia trains double-parked in platform 2, with the screens claiming it was a CrossCountry to Stansted. One Great Northern train parked in platform 3, with the screens claiming it was East Midlands to Norwich. Staff desperately making manual "do not board the train" announcements but being talked over by the automated announcements. Passengers looking thoroughly confused and asking each other if anybody knew what was going where.

Same happened half-an-hour later. Boards on platform 2 claiming the 1917 to Kings Cross, when actually it was the 1947 to Kings Cross, and a GA further along. Platform 3 was for the 1917, but the boards on 3 were advertising something else entirely. As I know the train I arrived on at platform 2 becomes the 1947, I was able to redirect some ppl from getting on that, thinking it was the 1917.

Same again this morning, with a 755 blocking platform 2 (which at one point then went off empty in the down direction, and then re-arrived a few minutes later to block platform 1 instead). Boards all showing nonsense.

The GA regional meltdown and the termination of the Norwich-Cambridge services at Ely mean that platform allocations at Ely are currently all over the place - and so the 'information' screens are currently completely counter-productive, as for whatever reason they just can't cope with platform changes in a competent way. Turning them off entirely would be much less confusing.

F Great Eastern · 12 Dec 2019

MikeWM said:
Same happened half-an-hour later. Boards on platform 2 claiming the 1917 to Kings Cross, when actually it was the 1947 to Kings Cross, and a GA further along. Platform 3 was for the 1917, but the boards on 3 were advertising something else entirely. As I know the train I arrived on at platform 2 becomes the 1947, I was able to redirect some ppl from getting on that, thinking it was the 1917.

Same again this morning, with a 755 blocking platform 2 (which at one point then went off empty in the down direction, and then re-arrived a few minutes later to block platform 1 instead). Boards all showing nonsense.

The GA regional meltdown and the termination of the Norwich-Cambridge services at Ely mean that platform allocations at Ely are currently all over the place - and so the 'information' screens are currently completely counter-productive. Turning them off entirely would be much less confusing.

The problem isn't the disruption. The older screens can handle it fine. It's something related te the newer ones. The old ones in Ipswich this morning for example showed correct info when new didn't.

They should stop the roll out of new ones till they fix the bugs. Best leave old ones until then.

MikeWM · 12 Dec 2019

F Great Eastern said:
The problem isn't the disruption. The older screens can handle it fine. It's something related te the newer ones. The old ones in Ipswich this morning for example showed correct info when new didn't.

They should stop the roll out of new ones till they fix the bugs. Best leave old ones until then.

Agree entirely. Times of disruption are when you most need the boards to be accurate!

trebor79 · 12 Dec 2019

They are OK at simple rural stations, rubbish anywhere else.
I fell victim to them at Cambridge recently. I was on a crowded service from Ely to Kings Cross, it was running quite late. I planned to jump onto the unit it attaches to at Cambridge, but then noticed the platform screen announcing it as the stopper due to depart at about that time. So I bailed and waited for the next express, as I assumed 'mine' had been cancelled and the stopper is overtaken by the following express.
RTT showed me that in fact they'd cancelled the stopper and run the express in the path. So I ended up even later thanks to those stupid screens.
I've seen them at Thetford announcing the EMR to Liverpool as going to Cambridge, as it hasn't updated following departure of the Cambridge train a few minutes previously.

Garbage.

F Great Eastern · 12 Dec 2019

Just boarded the 17.03 service from Norwich.

Had to direct people to the Norwich in 90 service since habitually the main board in Norwich is showing the 17.03 twice and the 1700 not at all. Manchester service listed twice too.

Totally useless. With the screens basically being divided into to two on each of them it seems they don't all sync up so the last panel on one screen might be same as first on another since the second panel is lagged.

With the old screens they all tend to be connected and all update in time with each other. So when a service is removed from the board everything shifts left one at once.

trebor79 · 12 Dec 2019

Really are a balls up. There was nothing wrong with the old screens at stations like Norwich.
Some of the rural stations needed something better than what they had (in some cases nowt), but most would have been better off left alone.
The screens themselves are OK. It's the stupid continual animation, wasted space and inaccurate information they display that's the issue. I suppose there's always hope the software driving them can be fixed or ditched entirely and replaced with something that works properly.

F Great Eastern · 12 Dec 2019

This gem from Ipswich tonight on main board screens.

Bad enough the sixth section along showing the same five trains as the previous 5 sections, let alone sections duplicating each other.

The second train on the departures list didn't appear at all on the main board since 17:36 to Norwich was showing where it should have been.

First time I have seen both sections on same screen on main board doing that. That's just lazy programing that could easily be coded around. Many of these issues just feel like the work of someone who doesn't actually have to use these boards.

py_megapixel · 12 Dec 2019

F Great Eastern said:
This gem from Ipswich tonight on main board screens.

Bad enough the sixth section along showing the same five trains as the previous 5 sections, let alone sections duplicating each other.

First time I have seen both sections on same screen on main board doing that. That's just lazy programing that could easily be coded around. Many of these issues just feel like the work of someone who doesn't actually have to use these boards.

That's ridiculous.

Even when there are two boards next to each other, Infotec configures them so that they aren't displaying the same thing, and it's rare to see that go wrong. As for where one screen is divided into multiple sections, I have never seen duplicate information in that way!

Northern and GWR may be generally cost-cutting more than GA, but at least they have gone for a quality product for their CIS. Where I've seen Infotec screens go wrong, it tends to be that either the screen has been vandalised, or that there is obviously some kind of problem with the screen connecting to data feeds. Abellio's examples just seem never to be working quite right.

gingerheid · 12 Dec 2019

We know this is probably because they've added a Kennet or a Dullingham be auae of an earlier cancellation, but this is designed to be proper confusing too.

Greater Anglia New Passenger Information Screens

Established Member

RailUK Forums

Veteran Member

Member

Veteran Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

New Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Established Member

Attachments

Established Member

Established Member

Attachments