Digital Signage Central

Check out this article about public transit digital signage. Chicago Transit Authority to display real-time bus location data on digital signage displays at terminals.

According to Permanent Campaigns, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is investing $24 million to expand a pilot program that provides real-time bus tracking data to its customers via web and digital signage at certain bus stops. The program, called the CTA Bus Tracker, has provided real-time date for one bus line (the #20 Madison route) since 2006. The expansion will make real-time data for all 154 CTA bus routes available on the Bus Tracker by spring of next year. Starting next week, 13 bus routes will be added, with the rest coming incrementally.

I loaded up the Bus Tracker to check out the interface and it’s very nice – bold and simple, with no fluff. Metro has implemented a similar interface, for non-real-time bus tracking called NexTrip Beta, and the CTA Bus Tracker, aside from actually being real-time, blows it out of the water in terms of interface design. The CTA interface is still a pop-up, which sucks, but it removes one superfluous element that Metro’s interface has… the need to input your destination stop. The CTA Tracker has 3 inputs: choose your route, the direction of that route, and the bus stop you will be starting at. The CTA Bus Tracker instantly updates with an easy to read list of the routes, bus numbers, and estimated arrival times. The interface is far more responsive than Metro’s NexTrip, which seems to have a unnecessarily long load periods after a selection is made. The CTA Bus Tracker also has a map option, which shows your bus stop on a map and the locations of the buses on your chosen route, updated in real time! It’s really cool to see the buses move along the map toward your location.

I tried the Bus Tracker out on my Helio Ocean, an internet enabled cell phone, and was very pleased with the results. It automatically loaded a mobile friendly text mode, and making selections was intuitive and fast, no annoying drop down menus or lengthy reloads. This would be so incredibly useful here in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles’ bus system is larger, 191 routes versus 154 in Chicago, but to me that’s all the more reason to implement this technology. We know buses can’t keep their schedules, we understand it’s because buses travel on the roads with cars which are inherently unpredictable, we just want the piece of mind of knowing where our bus is in reality, not where it’s supposed to be in fantasy schedule land. Instead of spending $60 million on fare gates which offer nothing to the customer, why doesn’t Metro spend half that to provide a service that would offer a huge service to the largest portion of the Metro riding public… the bus riders.