“Driver’s Fault”
Last night (Thursday, January 3, 2008), the local TV-news reported my old employer, Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, N.Y., was going to install a fancy-dan GPS bus-locator system linked to a computer that would display estimated arrival times on TV-monitors in the bus-shelters downtown.
“They been tryin’ to do that for the past 35 years!” we both crowed in unison.
Sounds glitzy, but won’t mean much to the average bus-passenger standing in a frigid bus-shelter in a blizzard.
“Just 20 more minutes, dude; then our bus will arrive. That’s what the monitor says......”
20 minutes pass, wind howling, wind-chill at zero degrees, snow drifting inside the shelter, wannabee passengers stomping around trying to keep warm.
Now the monitor says 10 minutes.
“What gives?” the freezing bus-passenger asks the corner-supervisor. “20 minutes ago it said 20 minutes — now it says 10. Where’s the 2-Parsells?
“Driver’s fault!” the corner-supervisor snaps.
Their fancy-dan computer didn’t factor in the fire-detour, which sent the poor bus-driver all around the city, and required a road-supervisor to make sure the bus would clear parked cars.
(Once I had to turn a 40-foot bus around in a narrow intersection. At least it was me driving — I didn’t hit anything. A take-charge Git-R-Dun driver would have bunted parked cars onto lawns.)
At least five systems were tried, but I only remember two in detail. One was rather rudimentary.
A small radio-transponder was atop the bus, so when a bus came within range of the shelter-receivers, the monitor displayed the bus was coming, or where it was in the line-up.
That system lasted about two months.
Finally someone smashed out the monitors because they were tired of the haranguing ads.
The other system was more advanced. The radio-transponder could tell the dispatcher when the bus arrived at the layovers, or downtown at the shelters. The shelter-monitors also told the frigid bus-passengers when their bus was coming. —Receivers were also placed along a route to tell when a bus passed.
—About two months. Again the monitors were smashed.
A fillip was added by adding counters. Counters were installed in each bus stepwell (front and rear) to keep track of how many passengers got on or off.
“Great idea,” a dear bus-driving compatriot said. “I’ll just hop off my bus and get on maybe 50 times at the layover. Then they’ll think I got a standing-load.”
Like all attempts at gizmo technology, that system crashed mightily in flames too.
I humblee predict their fancy-dan GPS-system will last about three months. They already have GPS bus-locators to tell the dispatcher where the buses are on the route. This prevents 89 bazilyun buses juking down the route together, like a parade of elephants, in a blizzard.
Pre GPS, I had to radio the dispatcher to keep this from happening.
But linking the downtown bus-shelters to the GPS-locators makes no more sense than local radio doing the same thing.
This ain’t the airport — the clientele ain’t the cowed airport clientele.
Them monitors will last a couple months; then the freezing wannabee bus-passengers will smash them out.
“They been tryin’ to do that for the past 35 years!” we both crowed in unison.
Sounds glitzy, but won’t mean much to the average bus-passenger standing in a frigid bus-shelter in a blizzard.
“Just 20 more minutes, dude; then our bus will arrive. That’s what the monitor says......”
20 minutes pass, wind howling, wind-chill at zero degrees, snow drifting inside the shelter, wannabee passengers stomping around trying to keep warm.
Now the monitor says 10 minutes.
“What gives?” the freezing bus-passenger asks the corner-supervisor. “20 minutes ago it said 20 minutes — now it says 10. Where’s the 2-Parsells?
“Driver’s fault!” the corner-supervisor snaps.
Their fancy-dan computer didn’t factor in the fire-detour, which sent the poor bus-driver all around the city, and required a road-supervisor to make sure the bus would clear parked cars.
(Once I had to turn a 40-foot bus around in a narrow intersection. At least it was me driving — I didn’t hit anything. A take-charge Git-R-Dun driver would have bunted parked cars onto lawns.)
At least five systems were tried, but I only remember two in detail. One was rather rudimentary.
A small radio-transponder was atop the bus, so when a bus came within range of the shelter-receivers, the monitor displayed the bus was coming, or where it was in the line-up.
That system lasted about two months.
Finally someone smashed out the monitors because they were tired of the haranguing ads.
The other system was more advanced. The radio-transponder could tell the dispatcher when the bus arrived at the layovers, or downtown at the shelters. The shelter-monitors also told the frigid bus-passengers when their bus was coming. —Receivers were also placed along a route to tell when a bus passed.
—About two months. Again the monitors were smashed.
A fillip was added by adding counters. Counters were installed in each bus stepwell (front and rear) to keep track of how many passengers got on or off.
“Great idea,” a dear bus-driving compatriot said. “I’ll just hop off my bus and get on maybe 50 times at the layover. Then they’ll think I got a standing-load.”
Like all attempts at gizmo technology, that system crashed mightily in flames too.
I humblee predict their fancy-dan GPS-system will last about three months. They already have GPS bus-locators to tell the dispatcher where the buses are on the route. This prevents 89 bazilyun buses juking down the route together, like a parade of elephants, in a blizzard.
Pre GPS, I had to radio the dispatcher to keep this from happening.
But linking the downtown bus-shelters to the GPS-locators makes no more sense than local radio doing the same thing.
This ain’t the airport — the clientele ain’t the cowed airport clientele.
Them monitors will last a couple months; then the freezing wannabee bus-passengers will smash them out.
Labels: Transit
posted by BobbaLew at 2:08 PM
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