A platform sign in London, England indicates when next subway train will arrive.
The TTC wants to install electronic signs that will tell riders when the next bus or subway is coming. And, to my surprise, advertising is not the favoured funding model (though the option is still being considered). Instead, the TTC may swap services with a technology provider: you install the signs, and in return you get access to the TTC’s underground network.
Readers familiar with Spacing will know that we’ve been advocating for the TTC to do this very thing: read about it here, here, and here.
Electronic signs could soon show bus and streetcar riders in real time how long they have to wait until the next vehicle rolls around.
“People don’t mind waiting for a bus if they know how long they have to wait,” said Toronto Transit Commission chair Howard Moscoe.The service, dubbed next-stop technology, is already available in York Region’s Viva bus shelters. A global positioning system aboard a vehicle would typically communicate wirelessly with signs at bus or streetcar stops.
Moscoe suggests two ways to pay for the service: Sell advertising space on the signs or naming rights to the stops; or swap services with a firm that can provide the technology.He said he’s considering the latter after meeting with Rogers Communications Inc. One scenario that was discussed, he said, included Rogers setting up the technology in exchange for receiving access to the TTC’s underground fibre-optic network to set up a wireless service for subway riders.
15 comments
I had the opportunity to ride Viva a few months ago. I was very impressed by the entire operation, but I thought the electronic timer signs were the best part. The only problem I can forsee is vandalism; it’s one thing to have signs like this on a few lines as Viva does, but even if these were only put on major TTC routes, that could still mean hundreds of these things. There’s not much of an indication that from that article that the Moscoe has put much thought into ongoing maintenance. Let’s hope that these signs, if they’re put into place, will be better maintained than the TTC’s stations.
Is this really necessary on a the subway? Even at completely off-peak hours, you only have to wait up to 5 or 6 minutes for a train to come. If there’s a big delay, they can announce it anyway. I’m sure the TTC could find better ways to spend their money.
On bus/streetcar routes where they come much less frequently, I do think this would be nice to have. Not standing around for half an hour is definitely a good thing.
Don’t worry Vic — it looks to me like the current proposal covers surface vehicles (buses and streetcars) only.
I wonder if they’ll include a way to check the info remotely. Some of the info in London is available online so that you can check before you leave your home or office.
The sydney passenger train network here in Australia has a similar system at most of the larger stations. It’s hard to know how honest the time to arrival is, and whether the stationmaster can tweak it as required, inevitably they are always running late.
Advertising models seem sensible for this type of system, where the information provided remains fairly static over the course of a minute. Showing 15 second ads for every 30 seconds of display would give a huge advertising reach. Councils traditionally have not dealt with advertising in a sensible manner, except for the sides of buses.
Sounds like a good idea in a cold busy city where every minute counts.
So plastering ads along the tunnel walls that act as miniature movie commercials for subway passengers is “ad creep,†but selling the ability to use cellphones in the subway is A-OK?
How is the latter not a *greater* infringement on passenger rights than another ad vehicle?
I live in Braunschweig, a city in northern Germany with aprox. 250,000 inhabitants. We have E-Signs at all major bus/street car stops downtown (we don’t have a subway system here) and I find them very helpful indeed. There’s usually a rather big group of people gathered around the stop, so it’s nice to be able to check which bus/street car I can take will be next without having to “blaze a way” through the masses to check the printed timetables. Especially when arriving at the city by train, the signs help tremendously, as one would have to cross several bus lanes to check all timetables to find out which bus/street car will be next.
I don’t know how the signs are financed, but they don’t show advertisements on the displays. We do have a lot of advertisements at the stops in general, though. I haven’t experienced vandalism directed at these signs, and thinking back I haven’t ever come across a sign that was out of function at all.
I would really appreciate signs in Toronto – it was rather frustrating to wait for a bus without knowing when it would arrive, indeed!
Does anyone think it’s feasible to include some kind of service status notice as well? Since some delays are for undetermined periods of time, it would be nice to hear if a streetcar is stuck or diverted because of an accident, fire, etc.
It might be handy on the YUS post-extension to indicate train turnbacks – for example:
4 mins St Clair West
8 mins Vaughan Liberal Vote Getter Centre
12 mins Downsview
Vic,
I’d hope this is only applied to surface routes as well. It’s still nice information to have for subway trains, but we’ve got giant flat panel tv’s installed in a number of subway stations that can show (and really should already be showing) this information… no need for another box on the ceiling.
8 mins Vaughan Liberal Vote Getter Centre
Hah!!
I miss the old TTC hotlines. Every stop had it’s own phone number!
Those numbers were the only Y2K malfunction I’ve heard of.
Two right feet> The other Y2K malfunction were people who named their cafe or store “Millennium” and one year later (or today even) feel kind of silly.
John,
The plan for subway platforms is to make use of the existing screens, once the subways are equipped with the appropriate vehicle trackers. (It’s specifically mentioned in the contract for those screens, but I have no idea when the TTC will have systems in place to generate the info.)
has anyone else ever noticed that two transfer machines sitting side-by-side in a subway station can be displaying two different times that are like five, even ten minutes apart?
Hopefully they’ll work better than the ones in Vancouver. Here, the signs will display the approximate arrival times of the next two express buses, but I’ve had several “arrive” before a real one ever shows itself. I honestly don’t know where they get their information, since they just seem to display “Arriving” every 8 minutes or so with no regard to reality.