More 'PIDS'

[matthew@mail.usyd.edu.au (Matthew Geier)]

 Martin Place railway station now sports a new VDU/MSWindows based PIDS
system. Under testing at the moment.
 While the system looks good so far and even has a nice set of summary
screens upstairs, I fail to see why Martin Place needs a new 'SPI'.
 The exiting indicators seem to work quite well, and you can see at
a glance if the train stops at your station. The new system scrolls like
the LED based SPI systems at a number of stations. The only additional
information over the old system is estimated ETA and the next 2 following
trains.

 What I find particularly annoying however is that another station on
the Illawarra line I frequent (Kogarah) has no passenger information of
ANY SORT on the platforms. An old style clock board is upstairs. Nothing
not even a clock is on the platforms. Now most of the time i'm at Kogarah
want a train to my home station of Carlton. Only 1 in 3 trains stops there.
 On the platform at Kogarah you dont have a clue. I make sure i'm sitting
in the middle so I can check with the Guard that the train is infact the
one I want.
 Some times the station staff will use the PA to announce the train, and
some times the train guard will announce the stops, but more often than
not its 'gues'.

 Instead of spending many thousands of dollars replacing a functional
(but old) PIDs at Martin Place, why couldnt they have installed that new
system at Kogarah. Not as if Kogarah is an insigificant station either.
There are several schools, a major hospital and a number of local bus
routes all near the station. 
 The station is important enough to have all but the South Coast trains
stop, but not important enough to actually have a PIDs system ?
(Last year I had a brief hope that Kogarah would get a PIDs when lots of
new cabling was installed - but no, what we got was double the number of
video cameras!)