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Peter Moon

Melbourne has stuffed up its app to track buses so badly that it is completely useless

Peter MoonColumnist
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Two years ago, we penned a report on the late, late, late arrival of a real time information system for Melbourne's bus network. After a promising start and 24 months to debug, we're sorry to say the tech has fallen in a heap.

Maybe there's a curse on the whole idea of a real time app for our buses. The first attempt was in 2010 when Sigtec was awarded a five year contract to deliver a GPS system to be installed over two years by Plexicor.

In late 2013, the State government binned the "solution", labelling it too unwieldy, too expensive to operate and already too old.

Despite creating an app to inform Melbourne commuters where their bus is, the only way to know whether one is coming is to see it with your own eyes.  Daniel Pockett

The second attempt was modern gear sourced from Smartrak, with the rollout completed by early 2016. It looked promising, and so we reported.

Within a few months, problems emerged. Critically, the Public Transport Victoria (PTV) smartphone app was always wrong. Well, "always" is too strong a term. Even a stopped clock tells the correct time twice a day, and the app was bound to be right, even if coincidentally, on occasions.

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Incorrect information

For the most part, though, any relationship between the "real time" location and arrival information from the app and the whereabouts of a real bus was random, at least on any of the routes we frequent.

On board a vehicle, our iPhone map reported exactly where we were; the PTV app routinely positioned us far away.

When we queried the system's performance with PTV, the response was that the agency was looking into data anomalies. Well, you can deal with tech anomalies in two ways. You might identify and cure the fault, or you might let it slide long enough that the anomalies become the new normal.

Like Microsoft Word's inability to reliably track document edits isn't an anomaly. It's just how the software has behaved for twenty years.

Public Transport Victoria's smartphone app has no idea where its buses are ... even when you are sat on the bus. Daniel Pockett

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Completely useless

Two years on, the anomalies have won. You can be sure a Melbourne bus is coming when you see the whites of the driver's eyes, and not otherwise. That's not exactly a jest, either.

The digital display panels on the front of many vehicles have become so old and faded that you really can't identify the route number until it's just a few metres away.

And a lot of the rolling stock aren't fitted with digital displays on the side or rear, so would-be passengers who run to the stop from behind just as a bus pulls away can't even know whether they've just missed their bus, or it was on another route.

Might you have five minutes to wait, or thirty five? The app has nothing useful to say about that.

Getting worse

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The system's tech woes hit a new high this month, when several lines were rerouted because they're converting part of Southbank Boulevard, beside the National Gallery, into parkland.

A few, but not all, of the stops along the way have notices, advising that buses will be disrupted for an unspecified period during the construction works. There have been no notices in the vehicles, of course.

At the stop outside the Alfred Hospital, each morning a PTV staffer boards and bellows the news that anybody wanting to travel up St Kilda road needs to disembark and take a tram, whereupon most passengers do just that, probably muttering that if they'd known about the disruption, they would have boarded a tram in the first place.

So, for information about a situation that we now know will persist for months, travellers have signs at a few stops and some stout town criers to rely on. But what about the PTV app, you wonder.

Well, there's good news and bad news. The app has a "possible disruptions" exclamation mark beside the affected routes – that's hopeful – but tapping it reveals nothing about several months of rerouting around Southbank.

The app knows that they're building a new subway station near the Shrine, and that might slow your bus, but a major diversion around St Kilda Road and Southbank doesn't rate a mention.

When Melbourne's tramTRACKER app for trams is a world class tool for travellers, it's a true disgrace that they can't get the tech for buses even nearly right.

Peter Moon is a technology lawyer with Cooper Mills. peter.moon@coopermills.com.au

Peter Moon writes on Technology specialising in Enterprise IT, Gadgets, Mobile & Tablets. Based in Melbourne, Peter writes a weekly technology column.

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