At Least You Can Get Some Email Done While You're Crawling Along
Hey, which would you rather have: a bus that comes on time, or a bus that comes late but has a nifty antenna on top? Well who cares what you want! You're getting the antenna.
A tipster advises us that there was a ConnectedBus event at the Fed Building today, at which Gavin and Nat Ford and Cisco announced that there'll soon be 800 wifi-enabled busses in San Francisco. You mean, sort of like municipal wifi? Yeah, that always goes well.
Details are nonexistent, so treat this with skepticism -- there's no information about this initiative on anybody's website. If it's true and they can pull off this gimmick, well that's kind of neat, we guess. And it would be extra-neat if the city could trick Cisco into paying for it, so we don't shed any more Muni money. But we can't help feeling like this isn't what we were hoping Gavin would pull out of his hat to fix the transit system; it's sort of like teaching a dumb kid how to fold origami when what he really needs is a math tutor.
(And PS: if we're sitting near a bus route, is this going to fuck up our iPhones if we have auto-join switched on? Every time a wifi bus drives by, the phone's going to try to switch from 3G to the network, and then fail after the bus is gone.)
UPDATE! Ah, here we are -- details: the bus has a touchscreen with NextBus info on it, and also some duller features like advertising screens. It's a nice clean hybrid; and there's also some undisclosed features that allegedly make the bus easier to fix. Still no word about when these things are expected to hit the streets -- but we've included some PR blurbs after the jump.
Here's what the people who stand to benefit from this project have to say about it. We're still not totally clear on why some of these things are beneficial (do you care about the "green gauge"?); and we're not convinced that others will even be possible to implement ("timely maintenance" from Muni? Yeah right).
Key Features • 95 percent emissions-free hybrid vehicle that helps offset up to 55,000 car trips (270 tons of carbon emissions) each year • Pervasive, high-speed Internet access for all passengers \ • Live NextMuni updates (route information, wait times, and more) via touchscreen • Ability to contact friends, family, and coworkers via wireless devices • “Green Gauge” that provides information on the environmental impact of The Connected Bus as it travels through San FranciscoBenefits
• Reduces emissions as more drivers turn to public transit, and as vehicles themselves run more efficiently. Emission-reduction factors fall into four categories:
– Reduced dwell time: The amount of time a transit vehicle remains idling at a stop while passengers board, make inquiries of the operator, pay fares, and exit the vehicle.
– Timely maintenance: A rigorous preventive maintenance program geared to each vehicle manufacturer, ensuring that transit vehicles stay in good repair and produce fewer emissions.
– Efficient on-street operation: Efficient operation of the vehicle at the individual operator level will reduce emissions, as will efficient management of vehicles on each line of service.
– Enhanced rider experience: By offering real-time information and enhanced safety and security to passengers, public transit becomes a more attractive option in San Francisco, a “Transit First” city.• Enriches transit rider and operator experience, as defined by information accessibility, increased comfort, and green incentives. Connected Bus riders and operators will experience:
– Prominent display of on-bus, real-time information, including status of connections at key transfer points. Allows riders to reach their destinations more reliably.
– Real-time arrival information and passenger counts to help fleet managers ensure adequate capacity; addresses loading conditions and bus-to-bus transfers.
– “Green” programs, which increase the reward for new riders who have switched from driving by offering data counts of environmental benefits per rider.
– Online trackability of new, integrated data, allowing potential riders to follow select routes on the network, inviting them to switch to public transit with greater assurance.
– New, publicly accessible data linkages, which offer innovative lifestyle benefits such as a parent tracking a child’s use of SFMTA by employing a mobile device to monitor a trip connection in real time, or a hotel concierge directing visitors to destinations with greater confidence.• Helps the SFMTA comply with Federal Transit Administration (FTA) standards regarding regional and national interoperability.
– Enables vendors to connect to one standard device, exclusive of vehicle manufacturer, for both bus and rail.
– Increases operational effective-ness because there will be fewer on-board devices and points of failure.
– Enables on-board integration of systems such as APC (automatic passenger counter) and Transit Signal Priority to ensure that priority is given based on vehicle load to create a smarter vehicle.
– Decreases technology upgrade costs—only one device (versus many) will require cyclical
upgrades based on technological advancements.• Improves reliability, as measured by schedule accuracy, operator availability, vehicle
reliability, supervisor coverage, and congestion management. The Connected Bus
on-board integration device address all five of these criteria:
– Helps improve schedule accuracy by linking GPS to APC.
– Addresses operator availability by using AVL (automatic vehicle location) to manage headways that are impacted by missed runs.
– Increases vehicle reliability by tracking vehicle health and integrating resulting data to inform fleet deployment more effectively.
– Provides the on-street supervisor with the technology to cover the system through NextMuni AVL/GPS data, vehicle health-monitoring data, APC, and other critical, real-time information.
– Improves congestion management through integration of signal timing, cameras, and other traffic-monitoring devices.• Increases transit operator effectiveness by enabling more effective communications, including:
– Real-time display of key data, relieving the burden of information sharing between driver and rider. Destinations, transfer points, and arrival times of connecting buses are all immediately evident to passengers.