Re: Passenger Information Displays

[Peter MacKenzie <SpamFree@bigpond.com>]

G'day

The problem of waiting for a 'lengthy' period to see if your stop is
listed occurs at most places eg Parramatta especially when a Gosford
service via the Shore is being displayed.

Perhaps an adaption of the Perth system is a good compromise as IIRC
they display something like 'Fremantle A' on the top line and the stops
scrolled on the bottom line. This means that regular travellers, rather
than regular users of a particular service, can see at a glance what the
stops will be. This, of course, does mean that a small number of
stopping patterns must be planned rather than the multitude that
CityRail seem to have.

Some other comments:

a) The entry indicators do not display stopping patterns, can they be
relied on to indicate the service that should arrive earliest at your
destination rather than one which will be overtaken enroute?

b) Handling of delays seem to vary between stations but the most common
I have seen is for 'Due In' to be at either 1 or 0 minutes for upto 10
minutes.

c) The destination is not always complete, eg 'Berowora via Town Hal'.

d) CityRail do not always list all the stations, for the services to
City via Bankstown from the west, Granville displays the stops to
Bankstown then all stations to.... whilst the top line displays
Bankstown as the destination.

e) From what I have seen at Parramatta, each display unit must have a
separate controller as they are not synchronised and appear to be able
to be rebooted individually.

f) They are not always reliable. A frequent display at Parramatta is for
one of the three PID's n platform 3 to show the destination to be City
via Bankstown with the station stops (from the previous train) of Harris
Park, Merrylands, Guildford .......etc

g) The ones I have most experience of are Granville and Parramatta and
they appear to be operated in different manners. (SB vs Station Staff?) 

h) Why is it that when a train has been cancelled, it is sometimes not
until or after the scheduled departure time that any announcement is
made? Up until this time it is displayed on the PID's as normal. My most
recent example is the 17:58 Parramatta to City via Bankstown (originates
at Richmond) but was cancelled and started from Granville - surely
plenty of time was available to have not been displaying this train as
if all was normal until its scheduled time. I rarely trust Parramatta
and travel to Granville when services seem to be in disarray, their
advice quite often means a needless delay of upto 30 minutes or more.

i) When the PID's are operated by the Signal Box, who operates the
recorded pa as I have also seen/heard these contradicting each other.

Regards,
Peter MacKenzie
--------------------------

David Johnson wrote:
> 
> Alex Borodin wrote:
> 
> > Do you need the complete stopping pattern (as is
> > done in Sydney)
> 
> Definately not!  The sign at Hurstville takes so long to go through all the
> stations between Waterfall and Dapto that people reading the sign to see if the
> train goes to their station delay the trains!
> 
> --
> David Johnson
> CityRail Guard
> trainman@ozemail.com.au
> http://www.ozemail.com.au/~trainman/