Now you see a bus, now you don’t

• I promised to update you with information on the new indicator boards installed at many of our local bus stops, starting with how the system works. There are two types of display, Pictures 1 and 2, which flash up alternately. A time in minutes against a service means that the bus has registered i.e. is communicating, with the indicator system and you can be reasonably sure that the bus will arrive in that number of minutes. For example, the No. 4 service on the 3rd line in Picture 1 will arrive in 35 minutes and the No. 31 service (line 5) in 71 minutes. If, however, the service has ‘SCHD’ against it this means that the indicator system has no idea where the bus is! The display then flips to Picture 2, where the ‘SCHD’ is replaced by the timetabled arrival time so the 15.16 for the No. 31 service and the 15.21 for the 4B services are just the timetable values; it does not mean that the bus will be arriving at those times - they could be early, late or not even en route. When the time reaches 15.16 the bus will disappear from the indicator, even if the No.4B will actually be along shortly! One lady told me that she arrived early for the Dorchester bus to Yeovil which was shown as scheduled. She nipped into a shop and returned to the stop where the bus was still shown with a scheduled time of 10 minutes hence. However, another lady at the same stop said that the Yeovil bus had arrived and left! The First Bus Company wrote to tell me that not all buses are registering yet, especially those from other areas which were helping out with the Olympic rush. As West Dorset County Council installed and maintains the indicator boards, I spoke to a gentleman at Dorchester and sent him an email with some concerns. I’ll let you know when he replies.