Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Bus arrival information

I suggested that technology should be used to tell commutters about the service numbers of the approaching bus. My proposal uses low cost technology to provide a useful service to the public.

I found that a high cost technology was already used in some bus stops. At the bus stop outside of the History Museum in Stamford Road, there was a large display showing the arrival time of all the bus services.

I watched the arrival time of my service. It showed 20 minutes. This was not helpful. After waiting for 13 minutes, the display showed the arrival time to be 7 minutes. But the bus arrived, 7 minuates ahead of the display.

To provide this type of information, it is necessary to use high cost technology to monitor the position of each bus and to calculate the time to reach each bus stop.
The irony - in spite of spending so much money, the informatin is inaccurate!

I hope that our leaders in Singapore realise that spending more money does not mean getting better results. It is better to use low cost technolgy. I hope that this feebdack is given to the people in charge at our Ministry of Transport!

Tan Kin Lian

1 comment:

  1. I think that buses should follow a timetable during off-peak hrs.

    Advantages include eliminating the need for arrival times of buses. By putting a timetable and adhering to it, ppl can't complain that the buses are late cos they are the ones who are late. Now everyone can properly time when they will reach their destination. Off-peak buses have a time interval of more than 10 min and so it makes sense to make sure they come on schedule so that ppl dun wait excessively.

    The argument against the above suggestion is that traffic conditions are hard to predict and buses will not come on schedule. I think this is easily solved by making the buses travel at a slightly slower speed by default (so that it can go faster if its behind time) and stopping at some bus stops (if its going too fast and it wants to get back to schedule). Just look at Japan and some parts of US, the bus always arrive on schedule!!!

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