Mapping out a digital solution

FWT`s touch-screen journey planner is one of four interactive modules on kiosks in several large US cities, including Dallas

FWT`s touch-screen journey planner is one of four interactive modules on kiosks in several large US cities, including Dallas

If you are under the impression that the digitisation of passenger transport planning, information and payment is still a far-off train that is heading towards your station, you need to check your real-time departure board app on your phone. When you do, you may well find that it’s already sped past you and catching up with it will be no mean feat.

In the last 18 months FWT's CartoGold suite of online interactive travel planning solutions have leapt forward in their ability to use scheduled and real-time passenger transport data that councils hold to plan a journey at bus stop-specific level. We can also incorporate a UK-wide journey planner, show zonal overlays for demand responsive transport in rural areas, incorporate data that shows cycling and walking routes and their popularity. But while this is all good stuff, there is still the assumption that these sites are used at home to plan future journeys. So, what about the man and woman on the street?

At Smarter Travel LIVE! we will display our new range of interactive touch-screen information kiosks and e-paper bus stop information displays, both of which will be on the ground in live environments in the UK and US by the end of the year. 

Both the interactive kiosk and e-paper unit ranges have been conceived, designed and implemented by FWT's US arm CHK America, with installations now live, or nearly so, in Dallas, Pittsburgh and Las Vegas. We have now taken their lead and applied specifics from our own CartoGold know-how to adapt the interface to handle the specific hurdles of the UK’s TransXChange means of entering and transferring public transport data, and not least the particular pressures of our own market-led, deregulated provincial bus industry. 

When we say kiosk, we mean our software within. While the housing needs to be durable and withstand the British climate, the software will work in pretty much any touch screen-enabled hardware. The displays have been designed to be relevant to anyone in a bus/rail station environment, or any location reliant on good public transport access. 

The default home screen shows a rolling list of next departures, able to absorb real-time feeds and including nearby boarding points, which is of obvious use to almost everyone passing by. But on interrogating each departure, you instantly have access to routing information and scheduled journey times, as well as being able to access the journey planning function to reach a destination by any mode.

The best way to describe our e-paper units are to envisage a Kindle. The dimensions of the screen are likely to be those of an individual Kindle, or two or three stacked vertically within a bespoke bus stop case. 

The obvious advantages are the ability to remotely update both planned and unforeseen changes to times and routes whilst saving on the costs of printing and laminating static posters and the time taken to physically update them. This has the added advantage of ensuring new information is posted on the day of a change, rather than a week before or later. We are in discussions to bring these units into the UK in a multi-site project to test the concept of remotely-managed bus stop information. 

The FWT team look forward to welcoming you to Stand G3 at Smarter Travel LIVE!. Whilst there, you may wonder why our demonstration kiosk and e-paper unit have been programmed to represent installations in a medium-sized UK town. Simply, we want to prove the point that medium-sized UK towns offer just as much potential for engaging audiences and raising awareness and patronage as their more glamorous city relations, and indeed their comparatively simple networks make the advantages quicker and easier to implement.