Real-time bus information needs to be better

Real-time travel information used to be something that the industry wasn't brilliant at sharing, but thanks to advances in technology you can find out quite a lot where your public chariot is.

Railways

It's not that long ago that the only way you could find out if your train was either on time, delayed or cancelled was to go to the railway station and have it as a wonderful surprise at the start of your journey. Nowadays we have a myriad of websites and apps which can helpfully give you a feed of the live departure board for that station and in some cases (OpenTrainTimes) there's a map where you can see your train bobbing along through each signal section and decipher what platform your trusty steed will be at.

Other systems, such as Darwin feed from the train operators' information systems so we know when a train is cancelled, whether it will terminate short and even to the extent of smaller things such as 'no coach D on this service' or 'no reservations shown' for example. All very customer-friendly and although maybe a little disjointed in places, it does afford the passenger with much better information than in the old days of waiting on a cold platform waiting for Mick or John the announcer to give them the bad news that their train is actually stuck at London Waterloo with 'operating difficulties'.

Buses

It's taken a little more time, but buses are gradually moving towards the real-time information, none more so in London where the system is far more sophisticated and you can follow the bus on its route as well as a countdown in minutes as to its arrival. London travel information is quite unique so my comparisons here are based in more rural parts of England where customers are not blessed with a bus on a metro-style timetable. In short, it matters more in essence to know if your hourly bus is going to come.

An increasing number of bus stops are gaining LED displays which, like London, give either a countdown in minutes or the scheduled time of the bus at that stop. What it can't do is tell you if a bus is cancelled and herein lies the problem.

Railway systems which drive the real-time screens can be cancelled by an operator or a controller which will then relay this over the hundreds of outlets and stations and show this service as not running. Not so in the bus world which makes the point of real-time information a little useless.

So what does it do? I have downloaded an app which has a map with bus stops on and you can select said stop and up will pop a list of buses for that location and their destination. A version of it is below:

Regular users of this will be very confident using the 44 or 42 but the number 50 will give a mini-heart attack to the user. The time is scheduled which means two things: one is the bus does not have any way of projecting its real-time to the software or, it's cancelled. 

This then renders the whole process as useless. The passenger waiting for the 50 will now be doubting whether this bus will arrive. Should this be the former, the customer will be happy that the service is running but should it be cancelled, the frustration being that they could have, being outside Sheffield railway station, caught the train to Chesterfield should that be the customer's destination.

But the confusion doesn't end there. Let's assume number 44 running 2 minutes late has developed a problem leaving Sheffield Interchange just around the corner. The bus is to run light to Crystal Peaks because of a lighting issue onboard and a fitter will be in attendance at the shopping centre. That bus will still show as being expected in 2 minutes' time but will fantastically drive past the customer at the bus stop and only then disappear off the screen.

As bus operators, we know what we are running and not running and we need a way to make the real-time system to work and instill confidence in the poor passenger waiting at the bus stop. We don't need a half-hearted system in place which is what we have at the moment and the industry is doing little to improve it outside of London. A correspondent reports that incidentally since the new timetables in Sheffield, the real-time information isn't fully operational (why we don't know) so the system is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

Technology is there (and alive in the capital) so let's get on and start providing better information for people who don't have 100 buses an hour to choose from.