CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
@chdot: (No trams past Ocean Terminal for last couple of weeks)
Unhelpfully, the TfE app still indicates eastbound trams as going to Newhaven, and IIRC the tram I took from the airport to Haymarket yesterday evening showed Newhaven as its destination, and the on-board announcements said the same. AFAICS you have to go to the Edinburgh Trams web site to see a notification of the disruption.
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I made this graphic *11* years ago on the Princes Stt. tram tracks at foot of the Mound and Hanover St. The advice at the time was that 60-90° was a safe angle to cross. It got magic paint 7 years later. Now conflicting advice to both "stay in your lane" and "cross at 90 degrees"
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https://twitter.com/cocteautriplets/status/1734509918395252883
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Step 1:
Design #tramline layout so bikescan't cross at 90deg
Step 2:
Install suggested 45-60deg crossings
Step 3:
Tell bikes to cross at 90deg
Or... here's our suggestions to reduce crash likelihood
--> http://www.spokes.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2302-Tramline-crash-info-sheet.pdf
And, if you do crash
See--> http://www.spokes.org.uk/documents/public-transport/tram/reporting-tramline-crashes/
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https://twitter.com/spokeslothian/status/1734541781637722348
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Hi Hayley, Engineers are due back onsite next week and once the assembly and fitting is complete, we hope to resume a full service after the necessary safety checks are carried out.
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https://twitter.com/edinburghtrams/status/1734871824410763434?
The app still says trams are running to Newhaven of course.
WHY cannot CEC/LB/TfE get ACCURATE live info onto their app?? Is it just the tram?
No the buses are often elsewhere too.
Not as bad as the hi-tech signs at the bus stops, which still can't show arrival times based on live bus tracker information for some unfathomable reason (it says at the bottom of each sign that they are just showing timetabled arrival times, and to see the app for live tracking).
IME the app isn't too bad, but it can get thrown if a bus is suddenly pulled mid-route 'for operational reasons'. What you do need to beware of is if the arrival time is marked with an asterisk (sometimes also greyed-out) because that means that it's reverted to the timetabled arrival time. It may be because the tracker on the bus isn't working, or its in a signal blackspot, and the bus is actually going to turn up at some point. Or it may be that the bus isn't actually running. What often happens is that the bus disappears from the app screen when the timetabled arrival time has passed, but if the bus is just running late but not being tracked for some reason then it's annoying if it turns up just after you've given up on it and walked away - especially if you're just too far away to run back to the stop to get it. (Tapping on the entry in the app for the bus you're waiting for to see where it actually is can sometimes be enlightening/reassuring, but doesn't help much if its tracker is completely OOS.)
I've definitely taken the asterisk to mean 'bus isn't coming'. It's a bizarre design decision to essentially show fiction on the screen than nothing at all when they don't have data. What are they protecting against? Are they worried that if an unheralded bus appears then passengers will assume it's some kind of elaborate scam and refuse to get on?
@jonty: I've definitely taken the asterisk to mean 'bus isn't coming'.
So do I, usually, but the other day I was waiting for a 400 on Gilmerton Road near Ellen's Glen in the, er, driving rain. The next one was showing as ten minutes away but with an asterisk. As that bus only runs half-hourly during the day, and none of the other services serving that stop would have got me any nearer home, I resigned myself to a long, damp wait. But ten minutes after its scheduled time - by which time the bus had disappeared from the list - the 400 did actually turn up. For which I was quite grateful.
Sometimes you just have to regress to pre-bus-tracker days, and just stand at the bus stop until a bus turns up.
Re info screens and the app, I happen to know someone who is in a position to know more than they will say…
Best I got was something along the lines of ‘there's several organisations involved and it's complex’.
Fine understatement and about what anyone looking at it will already know!
How CEC and Lothian Buses (91% owned by CEC last time I looked) and Edinburgh Trams relate to each other may involve smoke and mirrors
HOWEVER
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Transport for Edinburgh (TfE) is the parent company of the municipally owned Lothian Buses and Edinburgh Trams and holds the City’s shares in these companies. It is responsible for the delivery and development of an integrated transport network for the Edinburgh City Region.
“
https://transportforedinburgh.com/about/
I’d be more inclined to believe that was all true if the web site didn’t claim TfE ran a cycle hire operation…
Not forgetting there’s a software company company in the mix.
What role SA plays in all that is merely a matter of speculation.
I like to imagine that David Begg would have done something when he was in charge, but then I remember he had his own problems getting the bus company to do what he wanted.
At that time there was definitely more concern about buses than passengers, which is why Edinburgh then had the best fleet in the UK (and may still do).
https://edinburghtrams.com/news/new-tram-safety-campaign-targets-cyclists
http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=11324&page=5#post-128700
"The problem is not the rails. The problem is...mainly drivers"
As many on twitter immediately pointed out, their advice is utterly contradictory in numerous locations on the tram network, where the angle of attack for the designated lane they want you to remain in is *significantly* less than the 90 degrees they say you should *always* cross tram tracks at(in several cases less than the 60 degrees that is considered minimum safe).
This stinks of an attempt to shift blame and try to deter any lawsuits that might result from the annual intersection of crappy weather and already-established-as-objectively-and-legally-bad design.
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…first botched line to York pl.
Kerr told members prior to questions legal advice has been sought on the council’s decision to take no action against officers found to have misled cllrs and it found ‘processes have been followed in a robust manner’
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Edinburgh trams 'wouldn't have gone ahead if councillors weren't lied to on cost'
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https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/edinburgh-trams-wouldnt-gone-ahead-28198491
Accurate communications are pretty vital if you want many happy (return) customers.
Walking back from Ryrie's bar around 10.30pm a few weeks ago. Could see there were no trams running even though the evening repair work was allegedly finished.
Big crowd of passengers at Princes St stop. Screen had an ambiguous message about trams running between airport and Murrayfield. Should have said 'no trams between Haymarket and Newhaven or city centre'.
Visitors mystified how the city's tram system was out. No idea where Murrayfield was etc. Told them they could take an airport bus from Shandwick Place. In theory their tickets should have been valid. Was going to do an 'X' about it.
As an IT professional
‘there's several organisations involved and it's complex’.is the story of most IT projects...
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Free all night trams on Hogmanay!
Are you heading to @edhogmanay this year?
Find out more about our all-night trams & see the timetable here: bit.ly/4717V5H
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https://twitter.com/edinburghtrams/status/1735247067537093112
@chdot: Edinburgh trams 'wouldn't have gone ahead if councillors weren't lied to on cost'
See also: the Scottish Parliament building? (Although in that case it was ScoGov not councillors.)
@fimm:
‘there's several organisations involved and it's complex’.is the story of most IT projects...
My understanding is that in this case the 'several organisations' now includes the other bus operators in the city, not just Lothian as it was before.
Still doesn't really excuse the mess that has been made of the job.
“now includes the other bus operators in the city”
Yes, but some/all of their buses are being displayed correctly - live(?)
My Theory (and it probably borders on conspiracy as it's based on nothing than a knowledge of the inner workings of IT):
The original bus tracker system was setup using adhoc technology and no real standards (potentially using an unstructured text file/string). It worked reliably so no body questioned how it worked and the person was then moved onto another task which had potential to make more money than documenting their adhoc technology.
Fast forward 10 years and that person has since left the business so there is no body to go to and ask how the existing system works. In the absence of the expert they can't link the existing system to the new system so as said above they are having to build a new system from the ground up.
This possibly only came to light late in the day after an overconfident project worker (who didn't know any of the above) said in a meeting many months ago that it should be straightforward to link the new system to the old.
Sounds credible.
It’s also suggested that LB hasn’t fitted all buses with whatever GPS gizmos are required.
SO
PERHAPS someone/everyone just thought existing devices would ‘just work’ with new system(?)
Current Qs (too hard to answer it seems) -
Does anyone know how to fix it?
Is it a Q of ‘supply chain issues’ or cash or???
AND
Timescale?!
LB buses must have GPS gizmos capable of communicating with the internet or the current bus tracker app wouldn't work. So it can't be a hardware issue. However replacing the hardware may be simpler than writing software that will work with the current setup.
I wonder if there's something weird going on, like they contracted with a company to provide the existing tracker hardware + software side as a bundle and now can't simply unwrap it to integrate the new system? Because at face value you'd think the existing tracker could just ping the bus ID, service, and lat/lng to a lambda that passes it to the new system in whatever form
@acsimpson brilliant.
“@acsimpson brilliant.“
@ fimm, I bow to your expertise but I didn’t understand the internal logic in this -
“must have GPS gizmos capable of communicating with the internet … it can't be a hardware issue … replacing the hardware may be simpler than writing software”
I understand what @ Dave said even less - (“lat/lng to a lambda”), but might (also) be the answer!
Whichever, when will it get sorted?
chdot I'm not being very serious
worrying how plausible @acsimpson's 'MY Theory,,," post is...
“chdot I'm not being very serious”
Ok
And perhaps you were referring to earlier/longer post (or both).
“worrying how plausible“
Very plausible
I think this bit is the most worrying (and highly plausible)!
“This possibly only came to light late in the day after an overconfident project worker (who didn't know any of the above) said in a meeting many months ago that it should be straightforward to link the new system to the old.”
I understand what @ Dave said even less - (“lat/lng to a lambda”), but might (also) be the answer!
I have no idea either but found this that perhaps makes sense in this context.
What is a Lambda Function?
Lambda functions [in Python] are similar to user-defined functions but without a name. They're commonly referred to as anonymous functions.Lambda functions are efficient whenever you want to create a function that will only contain simple expressions – that is, expressions that are usually a single line of a statement. They're also useful when you want to use the function once.
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