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

Sydney has it, kinda

[Naikrovek]

Sydney has this kind of thing, but i don't think its GPS related...

What they do here is have little metal detectors about once a kilometer on the track, and at all station stops. they're all wired with cabling that goes along the rails into signal boxes that presumably have some telco connection to the nearest station, which each have connections to their adjacent ones.

What this does is signal to a control room somewhere where each track is. the control dude[ette] knows where all trains in his/her area are at any time. ALL public transportation systems should already have the ability to know exactly where each of their trains are at any time, to avoid collision.

Sydney stations (mostly) have electronic notice boards, displaying the time to the next train, what its stops are, and how many cars are on the train (so you can move to the appropriate place on the platform, shorter trains don't go to both ends of the platform, of course). I think the times here are put in manually by the drones, because they are way, way off once in a while, and other times have TOTALLY incorrect information. In this case they usually come on the PA system in their characteristically overly loud mumbly Australian voice saying things to the effect of "see the TV up there? bugger it! Next train goes to wwhsdkdjsidaoj asdoijasd a stopping at wlaldj alskfhw, shodija, oiweha, oasjas, then all stations to lkasd."

I wouldn't worry too hard about seeking a wireless solution, when the train people already own (or at least control) all the land that the rails rest on. Using a wired solution here is probably more reliable considering the weather up there. (isn't it rainy & cold all the time? i dunno.)

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