Friday 4 October 2013

Bus timetable information - Perth Road and Nethergate

IBIS Interactive Unit
A constituent contacted me recently about the electronic bus timetable information (IBIS Interactive Unit) in Nethergate opposite Park Place and audio facility on Perth Road near Grosvenor Road as follows:

"I happened to try the “audio” facility at the eastbound (north side of Perth Road) stop at the Harris site the other day.  It isn’t working properly.  It belts out a response at loud volume, but that’s maybe the problem: there must be “feedback” within the system, or some sound imbalance, because it’s quite impossible to understand what’s being said: the words are drowned out by the general noise.  So passengers with poor eyesight get no information.

Also, it’s a great pity (in my view anyway) that the only timing information now available on-screen here and at Queen’s Hotel is the “buses due in next hour” times.  All very useful, but what happened to the actual timetables which you used to be able to call up on screen?  Not there any more.  It would be useful to have them (I needed to check one recently, for use on a return journey later in the day) – I had to go to the office and get the timetables on the web.  No doubt I could have walked to the next stop and got them.  But why withdraw the info from the actual stop?"

Having contacted the transportation team at the City Council regarding this, I have now received the following helpful response:

"I reported the IBIS unit faults as soon as you informed us and i believe they are now fixed.  

We discussed the IBIS units at length in our quarterly progress meeting with VIX ACIS, where VIX informed us that tests have been carried out on the IBIS unit down south to try and eliminate all of the issues.

These tests have been successful and the improvements will be rolled out to our IBIS units shortly.

In the meantime, if the IBIS units in situ fail at all, please do not hesitate to contact us, and I will log the fault and make sure they are repaired asap."