11 April 2002
The final stage of equipping Christchurch city’s bus system with real-time passenger information is underway.
Stage one’s illuminated screens at the city’s new bus exchange telling bus passengers how many minutes away their bus is and what platform it leaves from has been operating since April last year.
Now passengers at the city’s busiest bus stops will access the same information system, beginning with about ten being tria lled this week at selected suburban and city stops.
By the end of July, patrons at 200 of the city’s bus stops will simply tap an interactive screen to see how many minutes away their bus is.
Passengers can also use the screen to see which bus goes to a specific destination and how many minutes away it is.
During the pilot phase involving ten bus stops, Opinions Market Research will interview waiting passengers for their feedback on the new screens. The Bus FinderTM system was developed by the Christchurch technology company. Connexionz Limited and has already played a key role in lifting the city’s bus patronage. It fulfils predictions that providing certainty about bus arrival times would increase bus patronage, especially at off-peak times.
There is now widespread interest overseas in the development, with Connexionz currently tendering for a number of overseas public bus fleets wanting fleet-wide real time information for passengers.
“At this stage our software can handle transactions involving a bus fleet of up to 3000 and we can develop this even further,” said the managing director of Connexionz, Mr Robert Burke.
In each of Christchurch City’s 215-buses is a GPS unit made by NavMan New Zealand Limited in Auckland. This position locator is linked to an onboard Connexionz computer, which uses a Tait Electronics mobile radio to report the bus’s position.
The sturdy and striking case for the interactive system at bus stops was designed by industrial designers Infact Limited and built by GPC Electronics, both Christchurch based.
When the project is c ompleted, Christchurch will be the world’s first public bus fleet equipped with a fleet-wide bus location system.
Previous models developed overseas have been applied only to parts of a bus fleet, with developers being defeated by the logistics of affordably equipping an entire fleet.
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