r/Glasgow Tools

Title
Author	twoxraydelta
Comment	Its different 3rd party systems working together to provide the information. The ticket machines are from a company who are highly regarded across the industry, and they adapt their back office software for different operators. Glasgow was actually an early adopter and a benchmark for it in someways. Their capabilities handle everything from the obvious ticketing, GPS tracking, driver text messaging and so on. (They all have sim cards in them for mobile data). This is where the app pulls the data from. The problem with the live information is the software FirstGroup (UK wide) use to record their cancelled journeys. Its software that was originally built for Windows XP. There is no way to integrate it into the live app. So when a journey gets cancelled (i.e due to staffing shortage) the bus is in the depot with the ticket machine off. The live tracking app searches for that bus and can’t find it, so just displays the scheduled time. To have each cancelled journey show up in an app, with current systems, they would have to do a manual input, which becomes a full time job. I am guessing if they can’t even get staff to put their buses on the road, they are not going to pay someone to do that. They should at least code the app to have a footnote saying “bus scheduled, live tracking unavailable for this service” or something along those lines.
Reddit Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/rh5aes/first_bus_shocking/hopjvd8/
Created	Wed 15th Dec 2021 11:20pm
Status	normal ()

Its different 3rd party systems working together to provide the information.

The ticket machines are from a company who are highly regarded across the industry, and they adapt their back office software for different operators. Glasgow was actually an early adopter and a benchmark for it in someways. Their capabilities handle everything from the obvious ticketing, GPS tracking, driver text messaging and so on. (They all have sim cards in them for mobile data). This is where the app pulls the data from.

The problem with the live information is the software FirstGroup (UK wide) use to record their cancelled journeys. Its software that was originally built for Windows XP. There is no way to integrate it into the live app.

So when a journey gets cancelled (i.e due to staffing shortage) the bus is in the depot with the ticket machine off. The live tracking app searches for that bus and can’t find it, so just displays the scheduled time.

To have each cancelled journey show up in an app, with current systems, they would have to do a manual input, which becomes a full time job. I am guessing if they can’t even get staff to put their buses on the road, they are not going to pay someone to do that.

They should at least code the app to have a footnote saying “bus scheduled, live tracking unavailable for this service” or something along those lines.