Real time passenger information systems - 3 versions of reality
21 September 2023

I have written a few times about the issues and problems with the "real time passenger information" systems that Cornwall Council, First Bus and Go Cornwall Bus claim to provide to passengers waiting for buses. See, for example, phantom and stealth buses, RTPI systems on strike days, RTPI fabrications etc.

Cornwall Council, First and Go Cornwall use different systems to formulate the information that is provided to the passenger.
First provides real time information on its own buses using data from within its own information systems. Where they show information for services run by other operators, they do not provide countdown timing on the services; instead they just provide the timetable time for the scheduled service that is due to arrive at the stop.
Go Cornwall provides countdown timers for its own services. Until recently, they did not provide any information about services of other bus companies. Now, they do provide information about the services run by others. They also show what look like countdown timers for the approaching bus. However, it is clear that this is not a bona fide countdown time prediction; instead it seems to be taking the time that the bus is due to be at the stop based on the timetable and then calculating the number of minutes from the actual time to the timetable time and takes no account of where the bus actually is in real time. It then presents the result as number of minutes to bus arrival time as though it were a real time prediction.
Cornwall Council provides countdown timers at the bus stop RTPI display boards for all services. I do not know how they make those countdown timing predictions but it is clearly independent of the bus companies and does not use the predictions being made by First or Go Cornwall.

As a consequence of these three organisations making their calculations independently of each other, the waiting passenger can be faced with three versions of what is supposed to be “real time information”. As an example, on 21 September, at Grampound I waited for the 27 Truro bound scheduled to arrive at 16:10. The three systems gave me at the same time the following predictions:
First Bus 14 minutes
Cornwall Council 12 minutes
Go Cornwall 2 minutes
See screenshots of apps and photo of bus stop display below.
By the time that the bus actually arrived at 16:24, it had long ago disappeared from the Go Cornwall app.

It is clear from this that Go Cornwall’s attempt to provide what they think is real time information is simply wrong. If they cannot track buses other than their own vehicles, they would be better advised just to display timetable information without the illusion of real time.

The irony is that the core information necessary to calculate real time information is available to all bus operators and the Council and even to the general public through the bustimes.org website. All ticket machines transmit their positions in real time through a government mandated open data system. Buses can be tracked in real time through this website. (See real time info page of this website.) See screeenshot below of the information for the particular 27 service that I was waiting for. It is disappointing that none of the operators or the Council have found a way to interpret this information in a more accurate and reliable way to passengers through their apps.