But he does talk about the infamous information signs on the Commuter Rail and the T is about to revamp the system.....again
Some of the signs can handle 99 characters; others on the same rail line can handle 1,600 characters. Should a dispatcher enter more than 99 characters on a rail line that also has signs that can handle 1,600 the signs go blank or begin issuing garbled blips and bloops.
Then there's the chain of command. Dispatchers at South Station send messages for display on the signs to an MBTA router at High Street, which sends them to a phone line, which transmits them to individual computers at each station. That process involves three computers and along that line, there's a lot that can go wrong.
There have also been software crashes galore on the system. When the vendor recently performed an upgrade, the problems got worse.
Once again, the system is headed for an upgrade, T officials said last week.
The T has recently received proposals for a new satellite-based sign system that is hoped to streamline the process.
"It's going to be a straight communication line" from the dispatcher to the station, said Stephen Jones, the T's deputy director of railroad operations.
A contractor could be selected by the end of the month, he said.
In addition, and don't hold your breath, Jones said there's the potential to do arrival countdowns routinely , meaning the signs could tell passengers how far away the next train is from the station.
Sounds like the same system we talked about last week
1 comment:
So if Grabauskas determined that commuter rail people need countdowns and actual time of arrival on signs, why is he so insistent that we on the subway dont want/need that? In museum work, we ask the visitors what they want and evaluate how their experience was to make it better. Why does the T insist on doing what it (in this case Dan Grabauskas) wants and not listen to us. Its like the silver bus debacle, they kept telling us we wanted buses, that it would be better than rail. Well, its not, I dont see other cities going out and doing BRT, they are adding light rail (SF, Portland, San Jose, Seattle, even Providence is talking about it). The T needs to talk to its customers and ACT on that info.
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