Bus info sign:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nycyclist/3247956492/

Train info sign:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nycyclist/3247981210/

NextBus doesn’t use RFID or ‘signpost’ AVL techniques as these are more expensive and less accurate than GPS. Every vehicle is equipped with a GPS receiver and wireless modem to send position updates up to every 5 seconds (buses can only move so much in 5 seconds!).

NextBus is a huge benefit to transit agencies and their bottom lines. Customer service is dramatically improved and costly labor for call centers is reduced. The archived AVL data allows planners to create timetables that actually match real-world conditions. Couple with real-time passneger counting, transit riders know if the bus they are waiting for is full. Over time, this knowledge will actually help smooth demand spikes without the agency spending any more money on new vehicles. Passengers will learn to catch the earlier or late bus – a difference of 15-30 minutes either way can have a huge impact on overcrowding.

Last but not least, several posters mentioned that knowing when the bus willa ctually arrives saves them from waiting in the weather or at poorly lit bus stops in the evening. Riders can get those last minute tasks done and simply walk out to the bus as it arrives. What a huge convenience!

To learn more: http://www.nextbusnews.com or http://www.nextbus.com.

http://mybus.org/metrokc/avl.jsp?id=1132

That NYC doesn’t have it is a pity.

I would certainly appreciate if everyone focused on protected lanes – for example, extending the 34th Street lane east into Queens – but I don’t think it’s necessary.

But to focus on the 34th Street bus lanes for a minute, how close are we to Phase 2 – where the bus lanes will be separated from the car lanes? Could we turn the Penn Station taxi stand – closed for “security reasons” since you-know-when – into an intercity bus stop, or just use 33rd Street instead of 34th? Who’s responsible for the NYPD lane-hogging, and how do we put pressure on them?

DOT had installed the 34th red painted lanes for faster bus transit.

On the block between 8th and 9th Avenue, there are long distance legal bus stops. As a result the lane is legally obstructed 75% of the time on the north side and 60% on the south side, while passengers bound for Boston , Whashington and Philadelphia get in and out of the buses and load and unload their luggage. YES you read it right.

Not to mention the NYPD TRAFFIC vehicles permanently blocking the lane for the rest of the time .

Until MTA and DOT get the basics right, a protected clear lane, there is no way to predict how long the trip will be.

A friend of mine says it best about the M11, “What are those displays going
to tell us ? that the bus is at least 45 minutes late?”

What we need is the bus to arrive within 3 to 5 minutes from the scheduled time. Not a system which give the MTA an excuse for not adressing delays.

Now let eveyone put their head down and focus on one single problem. Protected clear bus lanes.

How long have they had them? And when was the “design” phase of the MTA contracts?

One possibility was the MTA moved to soon, and hired old-time “transportation” contractors who were used to bidding on their massive bid documents. And those old-time contractors tried unsuccessfully to invent the wheel that was being subsequently invented elsewhere.

The argument here is that the MTA should not try to do anything innovative, and should rather wait and just buy stuff off the shelf that works elsewhere. And I can tell you that there are people on the inside with that point of view.

Um….no. I wrote about this in today’s headline comments but I won’t allow Streetsblog’s most proflific comenter to peddle such obvious falsehoods. Garbage trucks have GPS. Taxis have GPS. How long did it take to roll out GPS in Taxis?

How could it take so long to fail so spectacularly?

You’ll never win if you keep trying to solve the wrong problem.

I disagree. Here in SF, Muni has never been able to meet a schedule (in large part because it shares the road with cars, which leads to clumping). For decades we’ve just headed to the bus stop and waited for a bus to appear over the horizon, but now, thanks to NextBus, we can actually compare two nearby bua routes to see which is coming sooner:

http://www.nextbus.com/googleMap/googleMap.jsp?a=sf-muni#

the future is here!

I am a network engineer with cellular experience and I endorse this question.

I’d love to read a post-mortem of how the contractors failed.

For those of you have haven’t followed this, the MTA has wanted one system citywide, so it has always required the system to work in Manhattan. The density of tall buildings there is unlike anywhere else, which is why two contractors have failed. (Hopefully the MTA will get most of its money back again).

If anyone can engineer a system that works in Manhattan, go ahead. But I listen to the radio on a bike on the way home and it’s pretty hit and miss.

Moreover, you can’t predict how long the next bus will take to arrive if everyone is free to block the bus lane, even if you know where it is.

One solution, of course, is to implement a system that works everywhere but Manhattan, and tell Manhattan tough luck.

If you know there’s a bus ten minutes away, you can wait for it and get to your destination in fifteen minutes. If you know it’s more than fifteen minutes, you should walk and get the exercise.

Bus information displays make the transit system more useful, because they can inform decisions regarding bus alternatives: If the next bus is not coming soon, then one may want to walk, take the train, or hail a cab instead. Likewise, if the next bus *is* coming soon, then riders might choose it, where today they would just skip the bus and take the train.

The driver just pushes a button each time he leaves a stop to update the bus’s position.

Oh yeah, that’ll happen. Right after they announce each stop :/