Why don’t more buses have on board stop displays (Yorkshire)

[johntea]

Travelling around on buses in West Yorkshire today, it strikes me that here in 2017 the vast majority of buses don’t have next destination displays on board, which is annoying as I can plot a bus journey on Google Maps that shows all the stop names but still comes down to predicting where to get off in the dark night when it can be hard to know which stops you’re actually going past!

Surely it wouldn’t cost too much to implement?

 

[ChathillMan]

Travelling around on buses in West Yorkshire today, it strikes me that here in 2017 the vast majority of buses don’t have next destination displays on board, which is annoying as I can plot a bus journey on Google Maps that shows all the stop names but still comes down to predicting where to get off in the dark night when it can be hard to know which stops you’re actually going past!

Surely it wouldn’t cost too much to implement?

Sone operators make it work. Its one of those things that should be easy to install, but actually isnt

Travelling around on buses in West Yorkshire today, it strikes me that here in 2017 the vast majority of buses don’t have next destination displays on board, which is annoying as I can plot a bus journey on Google Maps that shows all the stop names but still comes down to predicting where to get off in the dark night when it can be hard to know which stops you’re actually going past!

Surely it wouldn’t cost too much to implement?

So long as the bus has AVL then you just need a dotmatrix screen installed and the guys that look after the ticket machine tech stuff do the rest.

It does cost more but i don't have the numbers

 

[AM9]

Sone operators make it work. Its one of those things that should be easy to install, but actually isnt


So long as the bus has AVL then you just need a dotmatrix screen installed and the guys that look after the ticket machine tech stuff do the rest.

It does cost more but i don't have the numbers

In cases where a bus operator is barely covering its costs, that could be a luxury that would result in the withdrawl of some services,

 

[SpacePhoenix]

I don't travel by bus that often but when I did the on-board stop displays hardly ever worked, you could probably have counted the number of times that they did on one hand

 

[GatwickDepress]

They're very useful in Milton Keynes, as the grid system leads to a lot of main roads looking very similar, especially in the dark.

 

[radamfi]

This has been standard in many European countries since the 90s if not earlier so lack of provision in 2017 is incredibly embarrassing. Many places now use monitors showing the next few stops and when arriving at interchange locations, the display shows the times of buses, trams and trains available to change onto.

 

[Hophead]

Visual next stop displays have been a standard feature on Brighton & Hove buses for years. Audio announcements arrived with the Volvo Geminis in 2011 and roll-out to the entire fleet was completed a couple of years ago. All buses now have wi-fi and USB ports are also now widespread.

I don't travel by bus that much around the UK, but I do find it surprising that many highly-regarded operators don't have visual next-stop displays at least. For anyone unfamiliar with the area, or after dark, they're so useful, I can't understand why they are not more widespread.

 

[jon0844]

Visual next stop displays have been a standard feature on Brighton & Hove buses for years. Audio announcements arrived with the Volvo Geminis in 2011 and roll-out to the entire fleet was completed a couple of years ago. All buses now have wi-fi and USB ports are also now widespread.

I don't travel by bus that much around the UK, but I do find it surprising that many highly-regarded operators don't have visual next-stop displays at least. For anyone unfamiliar with the area, or after dark, they're so useful, I can't understand why they are not more widespread.

Not having a clue where to get off must put a lot of people off using buses. In London it's so easy and reassuring that I wouldn't hesitate to hop on a bus.

 

[darloscott]

I believe the next stop displays are around £2000 a bus. It's easy to see why smaller operators won't invest in this technology. Similarly wifi isn't cheap either, and there is an ongoing cost with that too.

 

[radamfi]

I believe the next stop displays are around £2000 a bus. It's easy to see why smaller operators won't invest in this technology.

Before next stop displays were a thing, in Germany and probably elsewhere, drivers used to announce the stops by microphone. Is it probably considered unsafe now to do that, but the cost of doing that was presumably negligible. There are many so called "frills" (which are really just basics in other countries) that are considered unaffordable, even though Britain keeps bragging about how it is one of the richest countries in the world. If resources are scarce then it is better to provide fewer high quality services than a lot of poor quality ones.

 

[jon0844]

Before next stop displays were a thing, in Germany and probably elsewhere, drivers used to announce the stops by microphone. Is it probably considered unsafe now to do that, but the cost of doing that was presumably negligible. There are many so called "frills" (which are really just basics in other countries) that are considered unaffordable, even though Britain keeps bragging about how it is one of the richest countries in the world. If resources are scarce then it is better to provide fewer high quality services than a lot of poor quality ones.

When we leave the EU we will of course come up with a better, cheaper, solution!

 

[CatfordCat]

It's not as simple as paying X amount per bus for the screen and having AVL. The kit needs to know which bus stops the bus is supposed to call at on any particular journey (in town centres in particular, there are usually multiple bus stops served by different routes or groups of routes)

as has been touched on earlier, next stop displays / announcements are part of the same technology that provides real time information to the control room and displays at bus stops - this can all be linked in with ticketing kit or can be a separate box of tricks.

somebody (be that bus operators and / or local authorities) have to invest in the basic central box of tricks for the system (the smaller the area the bigger the cost per bus of having the central kit) then the kit on each bus / bus stop has to be paid for.

and maintained. and the ongoing communications costs paid.

and in some cases the difficulty of getting buses kitted out for one area's system to talk to the system in a neighbouring area - i believe this is getting better now there are more national standards, but in the early days of the technology it could be a big issue.

and then there's the ongoing cost of staff time somewhere processing data when there's a timetable change - this can be a sticking point, even before the cuts of the last 10 years or so, local authorities tended to find it easier to get hold of the up front capital for this sort of thing than any ongoing costs (e.g. additional staff time)

if you're not going to keep the data up to date, you might as well not bother.

in theory, with electronic bus service registration (which not all operators have gone for) and a national database of bus stops, this ought to be easy, but life is rarely as simple as that - and real time also needs to know the 'running board' for each bus (i.e. the bus that arrives at terminus on this journey is scheduled to depart on that journey) which the service registration doesn't show.

then there is the detail - for example, where you have a service with a loop 'terminus' (where the terminus on the registration isn't really a terminus) you need to tweak the timetable so that it comes out in a sensible form for Traveline, and tweak it a different way so it comes out in sensible form for real time displays.

 

[jon0844]

It's not as simple as paying X amount per bus for the screen and having AVL. The kit needs to know which bus stops the bus is supposed to call at on any particular journey (in town centres in particular, there are usually multiple bus stops served by different routes or groups of routes)

as has been touched on earlier, next stop displays / announcements are part of the same technology that provides real time information to the control room and displays at bus stops - this can all be linked in with ticketing kit or can be a separate box of tricks.

somebody (be that bus operators and / or local authorities) have to invest in the basic central box of tricks for the system (the smaller the area the bigger the cost per bus of having the central kit) then the kit on each bus / bus stop has to be paid for.

and maintained. and the ongoing communications costs paid.

and in some cases the difficulty of getting buses kitted out for one area's system to talk to the system in a neighbouring area - i believe this is getting better now there are more national standards, but in the early days of the technology it could be a big issue.

and then there's the ongoing cost of staff time somewhere processing data when there's a timetable change - this can be a sticking point, even before the cuts of the last 10 years or so, local authorities tended to find it easier to get hold of the up front capital for this sort of thing than any ongoing costs (e.g. additional staff time)

if you're not going to keep the data up to date, you might as well not bother.

in theory, with electronic bus service registration (which not all operators have gone for) and a national database of bus stops, this ought to be easy, but life is rarely as simple as that - and real time also needs to know the 'running board' for each bus (i.e. the bus that arrives at terminus on this journey is scheduled to depart on that journey) which the service registration doesn't show.

then there is the detail - for example, where you have a service with a loop 'terminus' (where the terminus on the registration isn't really a terminus) you need to tweak the timetable so that it comes out in a sensible form for Traveline, and tweak it a different way so it comes out in sensible form for real time displays.

Given my county council can't even share live info with anyone else (thus Google Maps etc can't show live info) I won't hold out much hope of getting this soon.

That said, Uno did say that by next September they'll have new ticket machines and will be able to accept contactless payment cards, so that's a step in the right direction.

Without wishing to go off on a tangent, making it hard for people to pay by modern methods is another issue putting people off bus travel.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Without wishing to go off on a tangent, making it hard for people to pay by modern methods is another issue putting people off bus travel.

Agreed. Now I can pay for a taxi by card this puts me off using the bus in many cases.

Bus companies are grindingly conservative despite the obvious cost savings to them of taking cash off the bus.

 

[Harbouring]

Agreed. Now I can pay for a taxi by card this puts me off using the bus in many cases.

Bus companies are grindingly conservative despite the obvious cost savings to them of taking cash off the bus.

All of the main bus companies (excluding smaller operators such as Emsworth and D, Xela, Wheelers etc.) in Hampshire now accept contactless payments for tickets but it took the County council to invest a lot of money up front to encourage the companies to undertake the change to contactless payments.

I wonder if there are some disabilty act requirements for audible announcements and thus improvements across the country might be coming, even if it takes another couple of years

 

[Bletchleyite]

All of the main bus companies (excluding smaller operators such as Emsworth and D, Xela, Wheelers etc.) in Hampshire now accept contactless payments for tickets but it took the County council to invest a lot of money up front to encourage the companies to undertake the change to contactless payments.

I simply cannot understand why the bus companies didn't do it themselves the next time they replaced their ticket machines. Cash transactions slow bus operation so much that the saving to them must be considerable.

 

[radamfi]

Getting rid of cash, and most importantly time-wasting driver interaction, can be done today. It doesn't need contactless payment or new ticket machines, and in any case the way contactless payment has been implemented in Britain outside London still requires telling the driver what ticket you want and the driver issuing a paper ticket. Plain pieces of paper or card bought from kiosks, local shops, or ticket machines inside the bus or on the roadside have been used successfully for decades in many countries. Even West Yorkshire used simple technology to cut out driver interaction in the 80s with the SaverStrip, giving 12 trips for the price of 10.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgBwc9gWEAEd9ci.jpg

 

[PeterC]

then there is the detail - for example, where you have a service with a loop 'terminus' (where the terminus on the registration isn't really a terminus) you need to tweak the timetable so that it comes out in a sensible form for Traveline, and tweak it a different way so it comes out in sensible form for real time displays.

Our local buses have several variations of out and back and loops to serve two villages and a small housing estate. Traveline gets really confused.

 

[PeterC]

I simply cannot understand why the bus companies didn't do it themselves the next time they replaced their ticket machines. Cash transactions slow bus operation so much that the saving to them must be considerable.

What cash transactions? Most bus journeys that I make have 100% of passengers using ENCTS.

 

[radamfi]

What cash transactions? Most bus journeys that I make have 100% of passengers using ENCTS.

I haven't been on a local bus outside London for a while now, but it used to be the case that rural and low frequency urban tendered routes had many or most people using free passes, but on major big city routes there were still some non-passholders travelling.

 

[Bletchleyite]

At least half of passengers in MK are paying cash.

 

[jon0844]

Getting rid of cash, and most importantly time-wasting driver interaction, can be done today. It doesn't need contactless payment or new ticket machines, and in any case the way contactless payment has been implemented in Britain outside London still requires telling the driver what ticket you want and the driver issuing a paper ticket. Plain pieces of paper or card bought from kiosks, local shops, or ticket machines inside the bus or on the roadside have been used successfully for decades in many countries. Even West Yorkshire used simple technology to cut out driver interaction in the 80s with the SaverStrip, giving 12 trips for the price of 10.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgBwc9gWEAEd9ci.jpg

I can use a m-ticket app, but it's near useless. Bug ridden, hard to set up, risks losing tickets (yet has a trick to getting free travel) and only allows one ticket to be used at a time, so if travelling with others you can't pay for them. Also, about two years on it is still only usable on a small number of services unless you want a rover (which is pointless for short journeys).

So we can't even do that right. Amazingly, this app is quite widespread under various rebrands and Arriva has even switched to it!

 

[SUB62]

Travelling around on buses in West Yorkshire today, it strikes me that here in 2017 the vast majority of buses don’t have next destination displays on board, which is annoying as I can plot a bus journey on Google Maps that shows all the stop names but still comes down to predicting where to get off in the dark night when it can be hard to know which stops you’re actually going past!

Surely it wouldn’t cost too much to implement?

Cost basically. It would seem as though Metro are keen to penalise bus companies they won't help the

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Getting rid of cash, and most importantly time-wasting driver interaction, can be done today. It doesn't need contactless payment or new ticket machines, and in any case the way contactless payment has been implemented in Britain outside London still requires telling the driver what ticket you want and the driver issuing a paper ticket. Plain pieces of paper or card bought from kiosks, local shops, or ticket machines inside the bus or on the roadside have been used successfully for decades in many countries. Even West Yorkshire used simple technology to cut out driver interaction in the 80s with the SaverStrip, giving 12 trips for the price of 10.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgBwc9gWEAEd9ci.jpg

Now that brings back memories! Remember the old adverts that played on the noise made by the machines which punched the SaverStrip!

 

[GusB]

In my part of the world it's only in the last few years that passengers have used the bell to indicate that they wish to alight! If you're not sure of where your stop is, a quick word to the driver is all that's required and they will give you a shout or a wave as they approach. Okay, it's not a busy urban operation, but when I've used unfamiliar bus routes in larger towns and cities and found that drivers are happy to oblige. Or is that the sort of "time-wasting driver interaction" that needs to be stamped out?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Essentially, yes. If the driver is talking, he isn’t driving. Therefore the bus is slow. Quality passenger information removes the need for this and helps speed the bus up.

Slowness is one of the biggest issues in competing with the car.

 

[marcouk2]

I simply cannot understand why the bus companies didn't do it themselves the next time they replaced their ticket machines. Cash transactions slow bus operation so much that the saving to them must be considerable.

I dunno, everytime i've paid by contactless it always takes longer than cash would have while the driver works out how to take the payment.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Further incompetence. Shops don’t find it hard!

 

[bluenoxid]

In cases where a bus operator is barely covering its costs, that could be a luxury that would result in the withdrawl of some services,

West Yorkshire, which is dominated by three of the big bus operators. It is a reasonable cash cow in the urban areas but congestion is starting to make a real bite.

I believe the new Buses Act will force hands on this matter.

 

[Andyh82]

I expect the full on iBus system with all the control, all the voice recordings, screens fitted to thousands of buses, probably cost multiple millions of pounds. Metro can't afford this, and First wouldn't do it off their own back.

We do have real time tracking with screens counting down in the vast majority of bus shelters though, which they don't have in Manchester or many other places.