One of Auckland Transports long promised projects seems to have gone live. Real time displays have been promised for years and over the last day or two the displays on the western line have started showing a due time for trains. Up until now the boards would show the timetable and would hold a service on the boards until it had been through but now we have an indication as to just how far away it is. It may be that they are still rolling this out on the other lines over a period of time so if you catch the train on a different line and it isn’t working yet then hopefully it shouldn’t be too far away. It will be nice to have this project ticked off the list.
Sorry for the poor quality image, I took it with my phone as I was getting off the train tonight. Also I noticed that for some reason the train behind mine wasn’t showing a time so perhaps there are still a few bugs to sort out.
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They did have these working properly at Homai earlier in the year, but they mysteriously returned to just listing the scheduled times a month or two ago. I never understood why. I found it very handy. I’ll be interested to see if the due time is back up on them or not.
I can tell you last night it wasn’t, maybe it depends which trains are running?? They need to get this going!!
My god, what primitive looking displays. Give me the Sydney type ones anyday! Surely in this day n age, it would be possible to have full colour LCD screens? I think having the minutes under the scheduled time is confusing, it should have the scheduled time. For example Scheduled: 19:55 DUE: 19:57 etc.
Mindyou, with that being said, a cr*p display is still better than no display at all. I guess that’s all they could afford with the pittence they get from the central government.
I actually would rather these, although you can display more information on the colour LCD displays, I find that in certain light conditions they can actually be quite hard to read. Sometimes simple is best.
I guess one advantage of the LCD displays is they can run ads to get a little bit more revenue…
These are pretty bog standard the world over, also in countries with PT systems a lot more advanced than anything in Australasia. I think New Lynn has large plasma displays for the bus/train interchange. There needs to be a lot more info there as there are a lot more movements, but on something like the Western line I think simple displays such as these are ideal.
The due times have been displayed for at least a year on the Onehunga Branch, so this is only something new out west.
…and the wierd thing is that (at Glen Eden last couple of mornings) it seems to have suddenly prompted a spate of PA announcements as to how far off the train is.
I hate those announcements!
“Good morning passengers passengers” – why do they say “passengers” twice? And some of the pronunciation is abysmal: “Pookee ko -eee”. “Why tack erree”
On announcements, how about those on the train?
“Welcome aboard this train service to Swanson”. Yes I know it’s a train, but what line? I once had a worried girl turn to me immediately after this announcement thinking she was on the wrong train. She wanted to go on a West line train to Mt Albert and was expecting “west line” or maybe “Waitakere”. “West Line” would seem better suited.