Developing a 21st Century Public Transportation System?

Terje Mathisen asks: "Oslo has a pretty good public transportation system, consisting of local trains, subway, metro, trams, buses and ferries (to get across the fjord, and to some of the small islands). Now they want to put screens on all the central stops (about 300), showing the exact time until the next bus/tram will arrive. This will requires GPS units on the buses and trams, radio communication back to the central, some form of comms link back to each stop, and daylight readable screens. On all the remaining stops, they want to use SMS messages, so that you can use your cell phone to query the system. Do you know about similar setups anywhere else? How well do they work? How expensive was it to develop, and what costs were associated with the deployment and maintaintenance?"

Comments

DC

[littlerubberfeet]

Washinton DC has a similar system eg "5 minutes until next train". It is flawed, but they do not use GPS, as it is a subway. They use magnetic relays to monitor train positions. The relays were first put in to only determine when the switches activate.

Why not use similar track sensing technology? I am sure some of it is already in place, and it would work for all track-based transportation. GPS would work for the busses, but as we know from the yro section, they can now triangulate a person's location with cell towers. why not use Europe's more advanced cell network to accomplish this? The boats are a more difficult thing though, GPS would have to be used, as LORAN isn't quite accurate enough

Seattle has something similar

[HeroicAutobot]

There aren't any setups at the bus stops, but Seattle has 2 web sites, BusView and MyBus.org that provide real-time bus location. MyBus.org can even be accessed using a wap-enabled cell phone.

I use the MyBus.org page for the intersection right next to where I work ( FAIRVIEW AV N & DENNY WY) practically every day. It's really nice because I clearly see when the next bus will arrive (and if it's going to be late) and I know to leave my cube about 5 minutes before it shows up. No more standing around in the Seattle rain waiting for the bus!