There are few if any industries that have the benefit of free advertising directly on the highway. And without planning permission, too. I’m taking display cases that give information on our wears—roadside timetables or other information about our services.
It really is quite useful advertising, for the comfort of existing customers and the convenience of new ones. We rarely make best use of such displays (and many, of course, are increasingly outside operators’ direct control). It probably won’t be long before there’s a high-tech solution available. There may already be one but I don’t think so (unless you know differently). What would such a hi-tech display do? It would be:
- Clear and readable in high definition. No more milky plastic with faded, damp or skew-whiff paper within. Instead, it would offer the satin flat screen of a laptop, in fact.
- Self-updating. No more staff with vans ahead of or after a change. No more threaded screws or stubborn bolts. A flick of a switch at HQ and the lot’d be downloaded instantly. All it would need is a mobile phone link (perhaps even just PAYG).
- Able to show information in various formats. Some people prefer full timetable matrices, others a summary of departures. If timetables, some like these vertically, some horizontally. There’s a preference on the part of some for the 24 hour clock; others like AM/PM. There’d be no reason why all these can’t be accommodated and changed at the press of a button.
- Able to show today’s timetable but with the option to select Saturday’s or Sundays.
- Programmable to display any service disruptions, instantly.
- Integrated with real time information, to give one source of up-to-date information.
Then again, with mobile phone technology ever improving, will we need roadside timetable information in the future, in any case?
7 comments:
Given the existence of 'real time' information displays at some stops, the electrical supply problem could probably be reagarded as solvable. We have, of course, also had electric street lighting for a year or two! I have no doubt that what you suggest is possible, but I suspect that vandalism is probably the strongest factor that will work against the introduction of such technology.
While you have listed most of the possible features, I would suggest another that seems to me to be a logical extension - the ability to sell tickets, especially by non-cash methods.
Many continental systems already have such machines. Not at every stop admittedly but at the major stops and interchanges. I was in Jena (Germany) some weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised to discover I could not only access real-time timetable information - which showed me that the quickest way to go to where I wanted to be was not the way I would intuitively have taken - but I was even able to print this out and take it with me so that I knew where to change and what bus to catch there.
In Switzerland, some museums and other attractions offer combined transport + admittance tickets that come cheaper than buying those items individually. In the past you had to buy these a ticket offices though, which rather defeated the point unless you were able to plan ahead. The new generation of ticket machines now allow you to buy these virtually anywhere. You can also get through tickets to trains etc.
Further to my previous post, I can see that with smart phones becoming more and more common, that operators should also be making real-time information and general timetable information available to these devices, and ultimately also permitting tickets to be purchased on such devices, so solving the problem of vandalism and ticket machines. I believe you can already buy train tickets on mobile phones in some countries. As proof of purchase you get to download a 2-D barcode which the ticket inspector scans with a special scanning device. The system is maybe too slow to be used on entry into a bus and can obviously still be improved upon: For example a credit card number can be used as a unique ID. Passengers would swipe the credit card on entering the bus and this would be verified against a list of recently purchased tickets with the machine beeping in protest if no match were found.
My local council can't afford to repair damage to existing stops, and has now apparently ceased funding its realtime system...so my question is, who will pay for all the new kit,and its upkeep ?
As operators rarely own or control this 'retail' part of their services, perhaps they get unfair blame when things are poor at the roadside,or their customer interface.
In response to Anonymous' question.
An electronic system can to some extent pay for itself as the dynamic colour screen permits advertising to be displayed when no passengers are requesting information 8sort of like a screen saver).
Also, it is wrong for operators to relinquish control of their sales end as this is their face to the customer.
cirdan05 said...
"Also, it is wrong for operators to relinquish control of their sales end as this is their face to the customer."
I would not disagree with that statement - in theory - but I think the problem with regard to street furniture, such as bus stops and shelters, is that it didn't belong to the operators in the first place. I know the situation is complicated (more so than can be described in one sentence!), but I do recall an incident, not long after deregulation, when one local operator repainted some bus stops used by their services in their house colour. Somebody from the local authority had to gently tell them that they couldn't do that sort of thing, as the stops didn't belong to the operator!
In general, of course, cirdan05 is quite right to say that operators should retain control of their 'shop windows', but when one sees some of the forms of advertising applied to buses, one wonders if some operators take that point seriously.
"it didn't belong to the operators in the first place"
In shire counties, it did. Councils bought the infrastructure such as flags, poles and some shelters from the operators.
"operators should retain control of their 'shop windows'"
Not always possible where there are two competing services. Even where there is only 1 operator, a third party can ensure a uniform standard.
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