Response to my Auckland Train Signage rant
Well, I received a response from Auckland Transport about my Auckland Train Signage FAIL post. Unfortunately it wasn’t very helpful as they merely (and carefully) explained how the signs are going to work and why they removed the scrolling list of stations:
Thank you for contacting Auckland Transport regarding the new Real Time boards to be installed across the Auckland public transport network.
Your comments were forwarded to the Customer Information team who have provided the following feedback.
The decision to remove the scrolling message underneath the destination information as seen on the current Real Time boards, was made to allow enough room for the next two services to be displayed (rather than just the next one) and moves closer towards emulating a ‘metro’ or ‘national’ style service.
If you look at the bottom of the board, you will see information to explain the abbreviations that may appear on the screen. These abbreviations will appear next to the destination name to advise the customer which key station the service is travelling via which will also allow customers to identify the line.
For example Papatoetoe/ GI would indicate that this service is travelling to Papatoetoe via Glen Innes on the Eastern Line, or Papatoetoe/ N would indicate that the service is travelling on the Southern line via Newmarket.
I trust his information is of use.
Thank you once again for taking the time to contact us and for your support of Auckland Transport.
Clearly they missed the point of my post which was: JUST PUT THE FRIGGING NAME OF THE LINE IN THE DISPLAY. The signs will be a million times better and you won’t need to add cryptic abbreviations nor require a traveller to have area and train network knowledge to figure out which train to catch.
My response to AT:
Thanks for the response,
Whilst I appreciate that the removal of the scrolling message frees up an additional line for information, I believe that adding /GI or /N, to the name of the terminating station, to indicate the line is counter intuitive and is certainly not in keeping with a ‘metro’ style service.
Surely it would be far better for the signs to read EAST – Papatoetoe or SOUTH – Papatoetoe (or perhaps EST Papatoetoe or STH Papatoetoe if space is an issue) ?
Using /GI or /N:
a) requires a key so that the user can figure out what the abbreviations mean
b) area knowledge to understand what/where Glenn Innes & Newmarket is
c) knowledge of the rail network to know that you need to take the train that goes via GI if you want the Eastern line and the train that goes via Newmarket if you want the Southern line.Which is pretty useless for first time travellers and tourists.
Cheers
Auckland Train Signage FAIL
I’m an avid user of the trains in Auckland. It takes me 20 minutes to get from my house to downtown (and that includes a 8 minute walk) which sure beats getting stuck in rush hour traffic.
But one thing that has been driving me crazy for a long, long time now is the poor quality of digital signage. In it’s current state it is awfully confusing for first time travellers which why (with the RWC looming) I was pleased to hear that MAXX was investing in some new real-time signs.
Alas it appears seems that the new signs will actually be a gigantic step backwards :(
First some context. The Auckland rail network currently has 4 main lines, as shown in this very nice network map (click to enlarge it):
Each line is assigned a name (Eastern, Southern, Western, Onehunga) and nice distinct colour (yellow, red, green and blue). All very straightforward and very familiar to anyone who has seen the London underground or NYC subway maps.
Now a peculiarity of the Auckland network is that a number of lines have stations in common, in particular the Eastern and Southern lines, which share 12 stations. This is where things start to unravel…
The current platform signs at Britomart look like this (apologize for the poor image quality):
Now if you look closely you will notice that NOWHERE on the board does it mention the train line! In fact since both the Eastern and Southern lines can terminate at Papakura the only way to tell which line you are on, is to watching the scrolling list of stops to see if the train is going via Glen Innes (Eastern Line) or via Newmarket (Southern Line). The problem is further compounded by the fact that trains on these lines may terminate at Otahuhu, Papakura or Pukekohe…
Imagine how confusing this is for first time travellers and tourists! They look at the nice network map figure out that they want the Eastern line and then when they get to the platform there is no mention of the line anywhere. Instead they need some area knowledge to figure out they want the train that is going via Glenn Innes, this is just awful.
The fix of course if pretty simple; just display the name of the line on the sign; Duh.
So you could have:
- STH – Papakura
- EAST – Papakura
- STH – Otahuhu
- WEST – Swanson
- ONE – Onehunga
In fact this is what they do on the MAXX website when you search the train timetables and this is what I was hoping to see on the new signs….
This morning I was handed the MAXX/Auckland Transport’s On Board leaflet which, on pages 4 and 5, raves about the new real time information boards that are getting put in place. Here is the mock-up of the board from the leaflet:
Words cannot explain how crap the new sign’s design is.
First off the line name is still not displayed but worse the scrolling list of stations has now been dropped. Instead you have now have abbreviations (/GI, /N /LS) and you need a frigging key to explain them… seriously ? Clearly they let some of us techies loose on solving the “real-time” problem and gave no thought on making the sign actually useful.
Hopefully someone from AT or MAXX will see this post and come to their senses (or better yet if you know someone working on this project, pass them this link).
/RANT DONE – that feels much better
UPDATE: I got a response from AT about this post
Section 92a scrapped !
Looks like section 92a is going to get scrapped or at least get a rework.
Woohoo ! The government actually paid attention to “the people” for once ;)
Thumbs up to the Creative Feedom team for drawing attention to the issues with the proposed law.
In case you missed it all (where have you been?) here are the top-ten issues that the CFF identified:
- No Independent Qualified Adjudicator: There’s no currently qualified or trusted independent 3rd party to judge (1) data forensics and (2) copyright law, so decisions must be based either on allegation or prosecution. Our positive solution to this is an extension in jurisdiction to the underutilised Copyright Tribunal (who currently handle only licensing disputes, of approximately one per year).
- Unclear Legislation: People don’t know how to obey the law because it’s poorly drafted and vague. The heavyweight TCF policy was written by and for conventional ISPs and it is inappropriate for the majority of “ISPs” under the new broad definition that includes libraries, schools, businesses, many homes, hotels, etc.
- Innocent People Framed: People can be easily framed for copyright infringement online, see http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/ . There are hundreds of Data Forensics experts in NZ that can tell the difference but expecting thousands of untrained businesses to do the same is impractical and ridiculous.
- Impractical and Technically Unrealistic Demands: Tens of thousands of internet devices in New Zealand are incapable of storing who accessed what, at what time, making corroborating accusations impossible. It would be like expecting, come March 27th, for all New Zealanders to be able to track who used a phone within a household or a business. Most phones just don’t have that capability, and most network devices don’t have that capability. Accurately tracking copyright infringement is a noble goal to head towards but we’re not there yet and therefore S92A is unrealistic and impractical. Government could amend the definition of an “ISP” to be instead a “CSP” (commercial service provider) which would reduce the scope to conventional ISPs like Xtra and Vodafone who are capable of tracking. They could then increase the scope of an “ISP” as internet hardware improves. In the meantime people can still be taken to court as they always could to resolve disputes (or possibly a Copyright Tribunal if that’s established).
- Business Compliance Costs: The business compliance costs of tracking (a practical necessity to corroborate future accusations) both in terms of buying tens of thousands of new hardware devices for the businesses now deemed “ISPs” have not been factored. Consumer-grade internet hardware devices capable of doing this cost approximately 0. We have been doing research on this and we may have some results early next week. It’ll certainly be tens of thousands of “ISPs” who need to spend that kind of money… and then you need data forensics and copyright law knowledge to use that tracked information.
- A Disproportionate Punishment: Internet disconnection is a disproportionate punishment that hasn’t been enforced by the courts in the past, even in extreme cases of copyright infringement (repeat commercial infringers as judged in a court didn’t get this punishment). Fines would be more appropriate and would protect businesses and home users. Music Industry studies suggesting people prefer internet disconnection to fines did not consult businesses or organisations (many of whom depend on the internet as much as a phone line). Further, the law doesn’t distinguish between a copyright infringement such as a thirteen year old’s self-written Harry Potter story (which if it uses the Harry Potter characters is copyright infringement) Vs. distributing thousands of movies illegally. Allowing fines would allow appropriate punishment.
- Harms Respect For Copyright And Artists: Although perhaps noble in it’s intent this law is corrosive to the public trust in copyright education that artists benefit from, and it risks undoing the social contract that underlies copyright; encouraging illegal downloads and taking money away from the creative sector. As artists we’re being very clear to distance ourselves from those companies pushing for this law so that the public know who is responsible for future injustices. On the issue of S92A we represent 9037 artists, out of 18,146 people (and 90% of these are New Zealanders).
- Business Risk: ISPs choose disconnection or connection under threat of being secondary copyright infringers themselves, or wrongfully terminating a customers contract. This is an unreasonable burden to place on thousands of businesses who are now deemed “ISPs”. Thousands of untrained people cannot be experts at data forensics and copyright law.
- Business Risk From Employees: For many businesses disconnecting a staff members internet may be like removing their phone line, effectively firing the employee. While inappropriate use of company services should result in dismissal there are obvious problems if the employer is unsure of the evidence, and associated risks in employment law.
- Reverses the presumption of Innocence: S92A calls for punishment with internet disconnect without due process and without evidence judged by experts. The “courts” under S92A policies are thousands of untrained “ISPs” and they operate under the threat of either 1) being secondary copyright infringers themselves if they make a wrong decision on copyright or data forensics, or 2) contract or employment problems of disconnecting people without really knowing if anything wrong was actually done. Businesses are risk averse, and untrained people may decide on who is the bigger risk to them — the accuser or the accused. In practice the accused doesn’t get anything resembling due process and it’s our opinion that most people will be considered guilty upon accusation.
Whoosh goes 2009 DD45
Apparently a smallish asteroid just had a near miss with Earth. 2009 DD45 passed by at 63000km which is well inside the Moons orbit.
It was realitively small, so if it hit, it would have only (only!) done the same amount of damage as a single nuke.
I suppose the worrying thing for me is that it was only found 3 days ago ! If it was going to hit us, 3 days isn’t really much time to do anything. What happened to all that near earth tracking stuff that everyone was working on a few years ago ?
One can only hope that it wasn’t noticed earlier because it was so tiny and that a bigger one would be found earlier.
We really really need to get off this planet ASAP !
How we landed up with Section 92a
In the parliament debate, National’s Christopher Finlayson explains their reasoning for reinstating Section 92A:
Christopher Finlayson: … The Minister [Judith Tizard] knows, and I certainly know, that we have all had approaches from various commercial entities, as a result of which the Minister has come up with a number of amendments. We will support those. The first makes some changes to new section 92A, and I need not go into that in any great detail. We support what is being done there. Essentially, it is putting back into place what had been there before the bill went to the select committee.
So basically MONEY, MONEY, MONEY…Read more on this sad and sordid tale here.
