Following up on the warm reception of the Pike St. OneBusAway sign, Seattle DOT has installed another two, both at Benaroya Hall.
This is part of Seattle’s plan to improve Third Avenue. The sign joins those already at Macy’s, Columbia Sportswear, the Fourth and Madison Building, and the King County Courthouse. As the press release states, “Real-time displays have been shown to reduce stress and foster a stronger sense of safety and security, particularly for passengers waiting at night and during other times when buses do not arrive as often. ”
It’s nice to see Seattle make some capital improvements along future RapidRide corridors. SDOT isn’t even a transit agency, and is well ahead of Metro and ST in real time transit information.
I know I really appreciate the sign at 3rd & Madison. Helps make my commute smoother. It’s nice to see OBA signs at other bus stops too.
I would be more encouraged to hang around downtown after working/peak hours if I had a better sense of when my bus was going to arrive, so more one buse away signs, the better.
What I don’t understand is why they don’t put these in the one place where OneBusAway is inaccessible by phone, namely the tunnel.
Yes, the tunnel is priority numero uno now. SDOT, please!!! :) I know ST is actually planning this in the next year and a half. But now would be better!
+1!
That would make too much sense for it to ever happen.
The electronic signs in the tunnel that could post the OneBusAway information are already there. However, the space is currently wasted with messages that everybody already knows, like “Downtown transit tunnel”.
Or make the tunnel wifi accessible…like NYC
…and South Korea.
As much as I’d like to see real time arrival data in the tunnel, I’m not sure if it’s wise to invest scarce transit dollars in getting these in for buses that will be kicked out of the tunnel soon. A bunch of routes are getting the boot next shakeup (I think?) and the rest will likely be out when U Link and/or North Link is completed.
I’d rather see effort put into getting one or more of the mobile providers in the area to add Cell and/or WiFi coverage in the tunnel. Each of the stations would be a great “Free AT&T WiFi” zone and I’d even consider switching back to AT&T just for that ability.
The electronic signs to display the real time arrival data in the tunnel are already there – it’s just a matter of reprogramming them to say something useful. They already provide a two minute warning for Link trains and warn about Link service disruptions, so they must already have a data connection. Simply reprogramming the signs we already have should be cheap enough to be worth it, even if buses will soon be kicked out of the tunnel.
To make an analogy, suppose the electronic signs at the RapidRide stations only existed to warn about RapidRide service disruptions and simply said “Rapid Ride B Line” at all other times. Much less useful than what we have, where we get real-time arrival info on not just the RapidRide bus, but every bus that serves the same stop.
Too bad the signs/OneBusAway estimates are rarely ever right (for the 358, at least). However, the post office window on 3rd could be another potential location for a sign that would be useful for a lot of people heading northbound from that stop.
Now everyone can see how really wrong Metro’s data is.
But OBA kiosks…great idea…install a few at Kent Station and put the pedal to the metal.
They should have installed these in the tunnel first. The crackheads who use the ridefree zone or should I say abuse it never pay attention to this stuff anyway! The rest of us use our smart phones but they do not work in the tunnel. Duh SDOT!