'Real-time' arrival screens to be placed at bus stops

THE NATIONAL Transport Authority is to provide €5 million this year for the introduction of “real-time” arrival information on electronic display screens at bus stops throughout Dublin.

Dublin City Council, which has responsibility for the roll-out of the long-awaited service, said it is currently assessing tenders from a number of contractors to provide and install the technology at stops.

The council had initially intended to have real-time passenger information available at bus stops when quality bus corridors (QBCs) were introduced in the late 1990s. However, the technology was never installed on buses to allow the system to be adopted. The real-time system uses satellite technology to identify the position of approaching buses and update the arrival time shown on an electronic display unit. To work, the system requires complementary technology to be installed on buses.

Dublin Bus was granted €10 million in 2006 under the Government’s Transport 21 investment programme for the roll-out of an automatic vehicle location system (AVLS) on its bus fleet. A spokeswoman for the company said the system is currently on trial on the route 123 from Marino to Walkinstown, and will be in place on all routes from Summerhill Garage in the coming months. Dublin Bus expects the system to be fully operational by the end of the year. The AVLS system will also allow passengers to receive bus arrival times by text or on the internet, the spokeswoman said.

The council has also budgeted €700,000 this year for the implementation of traffic signal priority for buses at junctions. It said all of the money was to be “funded externally”.

This traffic management system will also make use of the Dublin Bus AVLS technology to determine the location of a bus and what type of traffic light priority it requires. Where traffic carrying buses is backing up approaching a particular junction, the light can be changed to green.

The system also had a “journey detector” function which works by recording the time a bus takes to pass between different points on its route. If the time exceeds a particular number of minutes, a decision can be made to give the bus priority at upcoming junctions.