The perils of making stuff up

[hirez]

This is utter genius.

Will we find that (say) Firstbus build something quite as simple and obvious? I suspect not.


This, on the other hand, is a quite remarkable example of irony-fail.

Comments

[eljaydaly.livejournal.com]

Holy christ. Reiki?

They must be deliberately trying to evolve themselves out of existence. It has to be on purpose. There's no other explanation.

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

The first thing: it's down to the local public transport authority. We have a similar thing in Leeds that First and Arriva subscribe to. Most of the time it works, too. No public plugin-to-Gmap layer yet, but a lot of the bus stops have Tube-like signs ETA-ing.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

The larger and newer stops in Bristol have countdown signs. They're mostly right.

(Which is no use at all, see piece from about this time last year about the utility of public transport.)

Goo-locating the buses/trams is the killer app. Here's a use-case and everything: http://theevilchemist.livejournal.com/240657.html

[adamw]

Many of the "next stop" systems can be viewed on the web (the ones that use the ACISLive system, including Bristol and South/West Yorkshire). I'm not aware of any in this country that make public the locations of the vehicles in real-time on the web, which is a damned shame.

Brighton & Hove use a different (and better, apparently) system, but still no real-time maps - although they certainly exist as I understood from an article I read a couple of years back that they use the real-time maps in their control rooms!

For me the "killer app" is using the service on the move - for example I have SMS templates set up in my 'phone for the bus stops I regularly use.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Coo-er. That's nearly quite good. In that the Bristol one's got pointy-clicky stops on a Googlemap, but the Cheltenham one's mostly useless.

Lack of map is bearable if you already know the system and the way it relates to the local geography. It's opaque and useless otherwise.

[adamw]

Totally. These systems are still in their infancy, to a point - I think a lot of places waited to see how London's Countdown system worked out (the original beacon-based system which began to be installed in the early-90s is now being replaced by the seemingly much more accurate iBus system), and nowadays the systems that are in use are developing along similar lines.

The other important point to note - the operators have little input. The systems are usually developed by local councils or authorities, and I suspect that further development of the schemes is down to the perennial problem of funding, although I'd think that the cost-benefit ratio for something like this surely must be enormous.

[wehmuth.livejournal.com]

There is a noticeable difference between the system used in London and that used in a totally random sample of, say, Switzerland. I'm not sure which system they use here, though.

[mattydesade.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Brighton's pretty close, you can get real time info for a bus stop on the web.

You can also plan journeys through googlemaps linking in to the Brighton buses database.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

"The bishops weren't talking to women like that." That's because the catholic church is institutionally sexist.

I know a couple of born-agains who gave up doing tai chi becasue it was incompatible with their beliefs. Fools.

[aoakley.livejournal.com]

There's this for Gloucestershire busses (http://gloucestershire.acislive.com) but it's so terribly pre-AJAX that it's barely worth persevering with. That and the fact that there's not that many unpredictable traffic jams in Gloucestershire, so even when you do go through the hassle of using it, it tells you what you already knew (eg. the bus on a ten minute frequency will be along in ten minutes, give or take five minutes).

[ivory-goddess.livejournal.com]

I particularly liked the comment that 'the therapy "lacks scientific credibility"'.

This from that bastion of science the Catholic Church. The institution that never ignores science to suit its own purposes.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

That was the sentence that made me go 'But... What?'

[wehmuth.livejournal.com]

If superstitious belief systems want to start eating each other, that's find with me. I regard it as a net reduction in credulousness.

[janinemarriott.livejournal.com]

i hate first bus website so much, anything would be better. including an actually oldfashioned, fits in your bag paper timetable book