[LINK] OT: ACTION Bus Timetables

Roger Clarke Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
Mon Oct 25 11:42:36 AEDT 2010


The design of web-sites to support public transport could be argued 
to be within the link list's scope.

But I've marked this email as Off-Topic because it's mainly a 
confirmation of the utter unprofessionalism of so much IT work.

_______________________________________________________________________

The CEO
ACTION Buses

Dear CEO

I'm a long-term resident who never uses a bus.

We have a visitor arriving at the station and needing to get to 
Sidaway St, Chapman.  They were unable to work out from your site 
what they need to do.

So I went to your site, and quickly found:
http://www.action.act.gov.au/routes_timetables.html

For what happened afer that, read on.

Yours in bemusement  ...  Roger Clarke

_______________________________________________________________________


1.  Point-to-Point Itinerary

Your web-site doesn't provide a web-form whereby a person can input 
their starting and ending points, and start or finish time, and get 
an itinerary.

Surely that's a basic service that any transport organisation provides?

2.  Getting Away from the Station

Failing that, the visitor needs a map, and the inter-city 
arrival-points need to be highlighted on it so that visitors can 
orient themselves.

The way your site is designed, you need to firstly discover the link 
called 'Interchange and Network Bus Maps', then work out that you 
need the Weekday Bus Map.  For a lot of people, the HTML version 
doesn't work.  The PDF does, but has to be enlarged about 5 times to 
be able to read it.

The station isn't marked, and the visitor has no way to discover where it is.

A local can work out that the only service that goes there is the 80, 
which goes to the City Interchange.

3.  Getting from the City Interchange to Chapman

If the visitor even gets this far, they have another problem:  How do 
you work out which is the next service that will get them to their 
destination?

After studying the map for some time, I am still unable to work out 
what the number of the bus is that ferries people between the City 
Interchange and the Woden Interchange.

So I tried the City Interchange Map at:
http://www.action.act.gov.au/doc/InterchangeMaps/city.pdf

It suggests that you have to look up 12 timetables to see what the 
next bus is - 111, 160, 161, 162, 170, 300, 312, 313, 314, 315, 318, 
319.

The natural thing to do at this stage is to give up on that, and try 
the direct route 729 that appears on the Express routes map (after 
you've worked out that XPresso has nothing to do with coffee shops 
but is instead a misguided attempt to be stylish rather than clear).

To find the 729, you have to search literally the entire set of text 
in the diagram.  It's in the bottom right-hand corner.

So, if the visitor managed to get this far, they have to either get a 
729 from Platform 10, if there is one, or go and wait at Platform 1 
and see what bus leaves first that looks like it goes to Woden 
Interchange.

4.  The Timetable

4.1 Kingston to the City

If the visitor found that they need the 80, then they can find the 
timetable under http://www.action.act.gov.au/routes_by_number.html, at
http://www.action.act.gov.au/Routes_25_May/Route_80.html

The train from Sydney is scheduled in at 16:25.  In a stroke of 
genius, your timetable has a bus leaving at 16:27, just as the first 
passenger gets from the platform to the kerbside.  Your bus-drivers 
must really enjoy the invective that people hurl at them as they 
drive away.

The next bus is at 16:57, into the City Interchange at 17:18, or 17:27-17:48.

But it doesn't show which Platform.  So you have to go and look 
through the entire drawing again to discover that it comes in at 7.

4.2  Express City to Chapman

So, now what about that 729.  Back to Routes-by-Number, and look for 
it.  Ah, there's a whole two of them.  One leaves at 16:45 (which in 
most people's eyes would be *before* peak-hour, but maybe Canberra's 
different).

And here's another stroke of timetabling genius:  the one person who 
got off the train onto the 80 at 16:25 arrives at the City 
Interchange 7 at 16:48, 3 minutes after the 729 left from Platform 10.

The only other 729 leaves at 17:15,  That's also 3 minutes *before* 
the Route 80 that leaves the station at 16:57 arrives at a nearby 
platform.

So the only two express buses are unavailable to visitors arriving on 
the only train from Sydney.  Nice work.

4.3  City to Woden

Okay, back to Plan B.  Get out at Platform 7 at 17:18, and walk 
around to Platform 1, and see what leaves for Woden Interchange.

It's unclear when it will leave and when it will arrive.  So you have 
to do some sampling from among the 12 routes, to see what the travel 
time seems to be, and hope that will be a useful guide.

It looks like the various numbers only run in very small windows, but 
160 could be a lucky hit.  There's one from 17:37 to 17:53, and this 
time it does actually say the Platform number - 5.

4.4  Woden to Chapman

Let's see now, back to the Routes page and choose 26 and/or 226.

That offers the 26 at 18:18-18:36 or 18:50-18:59, from Platform 3.

5.  In Conclusion

I have the following as a possible itinerary:

Kingston Station                    in at 16:25 (NSW Rail willing)
Kingston Station to City Interchange 7 -  16:57-17:18 on 80
City Interchange 1 to Woden Ichange 3  - ?17:37-17:53 on 160?
Woden Interchange 3 to Chapman         - ?18:18-18:36 on 26

That's 2 hours and 10 minutes for 13.5kms, or 6.25kph - which is a 
fast walking speed (okay - if you've only got a light backpack and 
know the way.  If it was me, the bus-passenger would probably beat me 
by 10-15 minutes).

There'a a complete absence of any logic in the bus-service for people 
arriving on the only inter-city train.

And as for the information service:

In my browser, I've currently got open 11 HTML windows and 3 PDF 
windows, all showing ACTION bus pages.

Even when I started in the IT industry in 1970, we wouldn't have 
created such an almighty schemozzle of a system for looking up routes 
and timetables.  And given the tools that have been available at 
kiosks since the mid-to-late 1980s, and on the Web since about 1996, 
the web-site is an absolute shocker.

Has ACTION ever taken the trouble to do an analysis of requirements? 
Or failing that, some lab testing of prototypes?  Or held some focus 
groups to find out what people in the targeted segments think?  Or, 
for that matter, defined the target segments, such as people arriving 
from outside Canberra?  Or looked at how a professional transport 
organisation designs its information services?  And was this nonsense 
ever trialled on anyone before it was released?


Postscript.

I intended addressing this directly to the CEO of ACTION Buses.

But, perhaps unsurprisingly, they and their team are in hiding.

The site offers no information about the management team:
http://www.action.act.gov.au/about_us.html

And the ACT Government directory entries are vacant space too:
http://www.directory.act.gov.au/ccExternal_5.1/webdir/cgi-bin/webdua.cgi?ea2_.&organizationalUnit&7980ad44-5f2a-437b-a7a4-9a54569a4c6b

A Google Search offered this, but back in 2007:
Mr Tom Elliott, Director, ACTION, Enterprise Services, TaMS


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University



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