Major change to London bus stops is underway – but not everyone will like it
TRANSPORT for London is making a major change to its bus stops – but not everyone will be keen.
The capital has more than 19,000 bus stops along its 620 routes across the city.
Just 2,500 of them have real-time information screens known as 'Countdown displays', which scroll through the next 10 departures from the stop at any given time.
As these tend to be at the most used stops, they have become a popular 'staple' function of navigating the city's bus network, helping to avoid digital exclusion and improving passenger confidence, as people are more likely to wait if they feel certain a bus is due.
Although the LED Countdown displays are still useful for passengers, for the past six years TfL has been experimenting with alternative solutions which are less resource-intensive and more adaptable for the remaining 16,500 stops which are without displays.
Countdown displays require bus stops to usually have shelters fitted, and always need a wired power source and internet connection, which are not possible at the majority of London's bus stops as adding civils in retrospectively is massively complicated and not financially viable for a cash-strapped TfL.
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Double-sided e-paper displays attached to bus stop flags are the most recent solution TfL is turning to.
Able to show the same information for around half the price, the screens have a similar appearance to that of a Kindle, some also have 'speaking' options which improve accessibility as bus passengers with sight issues can press a button to have the screen read out to them.
While the new displays are in some ways a more advanced technology than Countdown displays, they have the appearance of being more old school as the display is more like a traditional printed sign.
Vix Technology, the company which produces both the e-paper and Countdown displays, told MyLondon at this year's Euro Bus Expo in Birmingham: "The beauty of them is that they are powered by battery alone, so no civil work is required, which keeps the cost down for organisations like TfL.
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“If you wanted to install 100 more, you wouldn't need to dig up 100 roads to facilitate them."
The new displays have taken some Londoners by surprise, a number of TikToks have appeared showing reactions to one display in Peckham.
Vix Technology explained how they work: "We take in all the real-time bus information from bus operators, we host it in the cloud, and using a 3G/4G signal we can communicate it to the display based on the exact location of the bus at the time."
The new displays do not mean the end of the classic Countdown displays, for now.
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They are still maintained and TfL does not have any plans to mass remove them, although they may be redistributed if civil works dictate the need to do so.
During bus stop renovations, such as when a new shelter is installed, the displays have to be removed and reinstalled afterwards, which is not the case with battery-powered ones.