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Dr. Gridlock
What if riders know when the bus is driving by?
JEFF GRAY
If knowledge is power, then TTC riders are particularly powerless.
Leave aside the muffled, unintelligible announcements in subway stations, which more often than not fail to inform passengers about the cause of a delay. Just figuring out when the next bus or streetcar is supposed to come can be a pain.
Schedules, if they are even posted, are often unreliable. And they are most often reproduced in a font that seems designed to cause eyeballs to shrivel. This leaves most riders at outdoor transit shelters stepping into the road every few minutes, squinting into the distance for signs of a TTC vehicle.
An automated TTC phone line used to give out bus and streetcar schedule information, but died in 1999 because of the Y2K bug. It would have cost $1.25-million to upgrade it, but the TTC decided to let it die because so few riders used it.
The TTC now has its somewhat useful 416-393-INFO line, which tells riders about how often any particular bus is supposed to arrive and then allows customers to request schedules or ask an operator for actual times from a schedule.
But the problem with both of these services is they provide only schedules, not real-time information about how your bus or streetcar is coming along, slowed by traffic congestion or other delays.
There is another way, but it involves technology, which seems to scare the TTC. Transit systems all over the world, and more and more in North America, are giving their riders extremely detailed information about how long they must wait.
One company that hopes to entice the TTC into spending money on new technology to do just that is Toronto-based Grey Island Systems, which has produced software that already tracks waste and road-salt trucks for the city's works department.
Last year, the firm took a jump into the world of public transit by buying U.S.-based NextBus Inc., which provides real-time transit information systems for 40 transit operations in the United States, including San Francisco. Washington's Metrobus has just signed up, and the firm is testing its wares in Chicago. Its first Canadian customer is the bus system in Guelph.
It works like this: All transit vehicles are equipped with global positioning systems, allowing a computer system to track their whereabouts and predict how far away a vehicle is from any given stop. This information is then relayed to electronic changeable message boards at certain stops, which tell waiting passengers how many minutes before the next bus or streetcar arrives. Riders can also get the information on an automated phone line or on the Web.
Grey Island's executive vice-president of business development, Brian Boychuk, says the system will cost Washington about $2-million (U.S.) in the first year, and then $2-million over the next five years. Outfitting the TTC might be even cheaper, he said, since the transit agency is already forming plans to put GPS-based automated stop announcements on its buses. NextBus, he suggested, could simply reuse the same data.
Mr. Boychuk, who has hired lobbyist and former TTC chairman Paul Christie to make his point at city hall, says transit passengers love the service: "It gives you more control in terms of how much time you spend at the stop. So if you've got time to buy a coffee, go to the drugstore to pick up a few things, you've got some comfort knowing that the bus is going to arrive at a certain point."
Because of the possible cost and complexities of the idea, TTC chairman Howard Moscoe says, TTC staffers are "not really keen on it."
But he said he would like to see such a system go ahead, and use the city's coming 311 phone information system to convey the information. He would like to see advertisers sponsor the electronic signs, making the system cheaper, he said.
When could it happen, given the transit agency's yearly budget woes? Who knows? This is the TTC. You may have to wait.
Dr. Gridlock appears Mondays. Send comments or questions to jgray@globeandmail.com.
© Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved
What if riders know when the bus is driving by?
JEFF GRAY
If knowledge is power, then TTC riders are particularly powerless.
Leave aside the muffled, unintelligible announcements in subway stations, which more often than not fail to inform passengers about the cause of a delay. Just figuring out when the next bus or streetcar is supposed to come can be a pain.
Schedules, if they are even posted, are often unreliable. And they are most often reproduced in a font that seems designed to cause eyeballs to shrivel. This leaves most riders at outdoor transit shelters stepping into the road every few minutes, squinting into the distance for signs of a TTC vehicle.
An automated TTC phone line used to give out bus and streetcar schedule information, but died in 1999 because of the Y2K bug. It would have cost $1.25-million to upgrade it, but the TTC decided to let it die because so few riders used it.
The TTC now has its somewhat useful 416-393-INFO line, which tells riders about how often any particular bus is supposed to arrive and then allows customers to request schedules or ask an operator for actual times from a schedule.
But the problem with both of these services is they provide only schedules, not real-time information about how your bus or streetcar is coming along, slowed by traffic congestion or other delays.
There is another way, but it involves technology, which seems to scare the TTC. Transit systems all over the world, and more and more in North America, are giving their riders extremely detailed information about how long they must wait.
One company that hopes to entice the TTC into spending money on new technology to do just that is Toronto-based Grey Island Systems, which has produced software that already tracks waste and road-salt trucks for the city's works department.
Last year, the firm took a jump into the world of public transit by buying U.S.-based NextBus Inc., which provides real-time transit information systems for 40 transit operations in the United States, including San Francisco. Washington's Metrobus has just signed up, and the firm is testing its wares in Chicago. Its first Canadian customer is the bus system in Guelph.
It works like this: All transit vehicles are equipped with global positioning systems, allowing a computer system to track their whereabouts and predict how far away a vehicle is from any given stop. This information is then relayed to electronic changeable message boards at certain stops, which tell waiting passengers how many minutes before the next bus or streetcar arrives. Riders can also get the information on an automated phone line or on the Web.
Grey Island's executive vice-president of business development, Brian Boychuk, says the system will cost Washington about $2-million (U.S.) in the first year, and then $2-million over the next five years. Outfitting the TTC might be even cheaper, he said, since the transit agency is already forming plans to put GPS-based automated stop announcements on its buses. NextBus, he suggested, could simply reuse the same data.
Mr. Boychuk, who has hired lobbyist and former TTC chairman Paul Christie to make his point at city hall, says transit passengers love the service: "It gives you more control in terms of how much time you spend at the stop. So if you've got time to buy a coffee, go to the drugstore to pick up a few things, you've got some comfort knowing that the bus is going to arrive at a certain point."
Because of the possible cost and complexities of the idea, TTC chairman Howard Moscoe says, TTC staffers are "not really keen on it."
But he said he would like to see such a system go ahead, and use the city's coming 311 phone information system to convey the information. He would like to see advertisers sponsor the electronic signs, making the system cheaper, he said.
When could it happen, given the transit agency's yearly budget woes? Who knows? This is the TTC. You may have to wait.
Dr. Gridlock appears Mondays. Send comments or questions to jgray@globeandmail.com.
© Copyright 2006 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved