Brian Rudman: Quick, hop aboard now for the time of your life

One damp evening last week, I reached the bus stop just before 6pm to be greeted by the electronic signboard announcing a choice of an 005 arriving in 10 minutes or umpteen Link buses, the first one 16 minutes away. Despite this "real time" advice, two minutes later a shadowy grey Link bus hove into view.

Wait eight minutes in the hope of the 005 or leap on board and take a 10-minute walk at the other end? I climbed on.

It was a bad move. Two stops on, we pulled into the Victoria Park Market stop just as an 005 - supposedly some eight minutes behind - roared past.

As my chance of a dry ride home disappeared into the distance, I sat and grumped as we went through the Link's changing-of-the-driver ceremony.

The next day I read that the Auckland Regional Transport Authority still planned to buy this infuriatingly inaccurate passenger information system from the Auckland City Council. A couple of months back I suggested the asking price of $1 sounded rather expensive. I'm still waiting to be convinced otherwise.

If I was buying a high-tech system wearing the prestigious Saab label, I'd be expecting it to be in perfect working order. But four years on from Auckland City ordering this $7 million set-up, it's still undergoing teething problems. It started off with a "missing service" error rate of up to 30 per cent. ACC officials eventually claimed that had dropped to 3 to 4 per cent before accepting ownership. I find the lower number hard to believe.

Still, I do hope the optimists at the transport authority, led by project manager Mark Lambert, succeed in proving me wrong. The attraction of an accurate signboard at a bus stop signalling the steady approach of the various buses is obvious. Just as its current propensity to peddle misinformation is downright subversive.

Mr Lambert argues he's got a good buy in that both the software system and the hardware are fine. The problem, to use the jargon of our age, is the various interfaces between the two. And of these interfaces, the human one is the most troublous. It's the ever-suffering bus drivers' failure to log on with sufficient accuracy at the beginning of each trip. I've talked to a couple of drivers who insist it isn't their fault. But they are only human and as jobs go, this must be one of the more stressful and least rewarding, and I can imagine the odd inputting error creeping in.

Anyway, the transport authority's plan is to try to remove the human factor from this stage of the system. One way would be for the keypad to reject an incorrect pin number.

Another driver error, apparently, is to forgetfully start a trip without even notifying the system. Linking the keypad to the bus ignition might be a way of preventing that error.

There are other interface problems as well: signal cable systems within the bus for example, which will also be checked out.

Then there are the phantom buses that turn up at a stop with no warning. Some, obviously, are the result of driver failure to log on. But the other reason is that of a bus fleet approaching 950 vehicles, only 737 are fitted with the satellite signalling equipment connecting them with the system. The rest will eventually be equipped. Also, Mr Lambert plans to introduce a bit of responsibility to the whole set-up. Auckland City launched the system in 2002 and its electronic brains remain buried in the servers of the council's IT department.

Unfortunately the city had no power to police the front-end of the system. Bus operators are contracted to the Auckland Regional Council, and latterly the transport authority, not Auckland City. So city officials had no leverage when it came to persuading bus operators to ensure the system was working properly at their end.

Once the transport authority takes control of the "real time" system, it will have the motivation, and the power of persuasion, to ensure bus operators do join the party. If all the above happens, this signalling folly might finally work as promised. But I'm not holding my breath.