Archive for the 'Transportation' Category

My Baby Takes The Morning train

Before heading into work i normally check the Connex web site to see if there are any disruptions just in case I need to change my travel plans.

If you look at the table above, you’ll notice that the 8:27am Cragieburn train is listed as “will now run” and then listed again “has been cancelled“.

At first I thought that this meant that the was cancelled then would run (ie: updates ordered by time) but that didn’t make sense judging by the rest of the updates. That would have meant my train would be running. After a bit more guesswork, I deduced that they had ordered the status updates by Line and then Service’ which would have meant my train was cancelled.

By that point I realised all this thinking about it too much and gave up.

It makes you wonder about the type of meeting they had to discuss the overall functionality of this page. I’m sure the question “how can we make this page as unusable as possible?” was raised a few times.

If I was working for the company that developed the site, Platform Interactive, I’d be embarrased to put my name on this poorly thoughout piece of functionality.

Disinformation Displays

The new information displays at Flinders St are very impressive. Bright, clear and organised. I’ve noticed that for one reason or another, the displays don’t exactly give you the right information first time around. Here are two examples (click for larger versions):

Information Display - All Trains To North Melbourne

The PID is showing the 8:49 AM North Melbourne service and the next service is a 6:49 PM Cragieburn. The picture was taken at 6:45 PM. As trains were coming and going on the platforms the display wasn’t updating and to make matters worse there were no audible announcements so if the displays couldn’t be reset there was no one providing any further direction.

This next shot was taken Tuesday morning. The caption says: ‘Normal Saturday Service with extra services’.

Information Display - Weekend Services on a Tuesday

One would assume that there is someone somewhere pressing buttons running all of this. Clearly things haven’t progressed technologically enough.