WebWatch might be better

[Busjack]

51 minutes ago, Pace831 said:

They also added a new banner to the top with a picture of what looks like an Orion.

Only thing obviously new is the Trapeze logo and more use of maroon. I'm not sure about the city scene, but the bus with the radio beacon was always there.

[Pace831]

3 minutes ago, Busjack said:

Only thing obviously new is the Trapeze logo and more use of maroon. I'm not sure about the city scene, but the bus with the radio beacon was always there.

It's working now, but looks like it doesn't show deadheads anymore. Darn.

[Busjack]

13 minutes ago, Busjack said:

I'm not sure about the city scene, but the bus with the radio beacon was always there.

Only change is the Trapeze logo. Compare this full screen shot from a couple of weeks ago on the 512 quest.

I'm not getting the same thing you posted, but got:

[Pace831]

12 minutes ago, Busjack said:

Only change is the Trapeze logo. Compare this full screen shot from a couple of weeks ago on the 512 quest.

I'm not getting the same thing you posted, but got:

That's strange you're getting a different logo. I noticed it looked like what you posted at about 3:00 PM but it has since changed.

[Busjack]

7 minutes ago, Pace831 said:

That's strange you're getting a different logo. I noticed it looked like what you posted at about 3:00 PM but it has since changed.

What I posted immediately above I got at about 5:40. Now I just got the Trapeze one.

What I figure (and needs time to bear out) is that they are still loading the system, but Pace is going to brand its as Pace Bus Tracker, not Trapeze's brand.

[Pace831]

Confirmed, it is no longer showing Not In Service / To Garage buses. I was almost ready to install a 24/7 bus monitor in my kitchen until I found that out. Don't they realize most of the hits on Webwatch are from chitransit.org members?? Darn, I was hoping to use that feature to help me photograph deadheading buses on I-80, but that's going to be harder now.

And they still haven't added route 361.

[Busjack]

To reinforce what I previously said, a search for Transitmaster WebWatch turns up other agencies with that banner, but Madison Wisconsin has the new multi-route map but its own logo.

[Pace831]

No problem showing every bus currently running (on Sunday). Wonder if I can get this to work during rush hour?

[Busjack]

Guess what folks, the old Pace Bus Tracker banner is back (2:35 p.m.):

[Pace831]

Here's the entire Pace system at 5:30 PM. It took about 20 minutes to load all the routes on my computer. Anyone care to count the buses?

[Busjack]

1 hour ago, Pace831 said:

Anyone care to count the buses?

Not on that. It's bad enough having to zoom the map when a couple of buses are overlapping, such as at a TC.

About the most I have tried at once is a small division, like SW, above, and only to see if there was anything over 6542, which there wasn't.

BTW, one of the things I saw on the Madison map was that they had destinations in the bus balloons. While not comprehensible to me as an outsider, that might be an idea here,such as to differentiate a 213 Highland Park from 213 Northbrook Court.

 

[Pace831]

8 minutes ago, Busjack said:

BTW, one of the things I saw on the Madison map was that they had destinations in the bus balloons. While not comprehensible to me as an outsider, that might be an idea here,such as to differentiate a 213 Highland Park from 213 Northbrook Court.

I agree showing the terminal is a good idea for routes that have branches. In the example above, WTP stands for West Transfer Point, but it would make more sense to say "Destination" instead of "direction". Or say something like "Route 213 - northbound to Highland Park".

Showing schedule adherence is also not a bad idea. I know I would look at that feature. The bus pictured above is actually early.

A couple Pace buses always show up with the bike (rack) symbol on the tracker. Both are NABIs, one is at S and the other at W. Apparently just a trivial mistake that nobody ever caught.

[Busjack]

3 hours ago, Pace831 said:

Showing schedule adherence is also not a bad idea. I know I would look at that feature. The bus pictured above is actually early.

As Illustrated by my 512 capture, that shows up on the bus stop popup, but not on the bus popup.

I don't know how closely Madison calibrates its adherence to schedules, but since both it and Pace use Trapeze Transitmaster, the data must be there.

[Pace831]

As noted in another thread, here is 6560 on a deadhead to River garage. Since deadheads normally do not show up anymore, would this be caused by the operator's failure to enter in the IBS properly? The bus signs would be displaying "610" rather than "To Garage", correct?

Also, they added route 807, as seen in the toolbar on the left. The map trace doesn't work though. Tomorrow we'll have to see whether 2697 or 2698 show up there.

[Busjack]

12 hours ago, Pace831 said:

As noted in another thread, here is 6560 on a deadhead to River garage. Since deadheads normally do not show up anymore, would this be caused by the operator's failure to enter in the IBS properly? The bus signs would be displaying "610" rather than "To Garage", correct?

No reason they would necessarily be correlated, as they weren't before. Only change was a server upgrade.

[BusHunter]

Dont signs change on there own for pace or is that just cta?

[Busjack]

22 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

Dont signs change on there own for pace or is that just cta?

I got an official reply from Pace when I complained that the 422 ones were all messed up. Essentially it is the same as CTA. The IBS tells the sign controller at some coordinate on the route to change the sign. For instance just when making the turn toward Nieman Marcus from the ring road, the sign flips from 422 Old Orchard/Glenview/Northbrk Ct to 422 Glenview/Old Orchard/Linden CTA. Problem back then was that it turned at exactly the same point from 422 Northbrook Metra Only to 422 Lake Ave/Linden CTA.

That essentially was the same thing underlying the hassle over 410/411 switching signs "automatically 5 minutes after leaving Golf Mill" according to the operator, and the terminal being moved from J.C. Penney to the Food Court entrance. Only difference there is that instead of 422 staying a 422, 410 and 411 were supposed to interline at Golf Mill, but on Webwatch essentially interlined about 1/2 mile further on, so some 410s would show up on Greenwood.

The one difference seems to be that Pace drivers can (but usually don't) override the IBS by entering something manually into the Luminator box, while some CTA drivers have posted that even if they tried to do so, the Clever Device would reset it to whatever the Clever Device wanted.

What might be new for Pace is that WebWatch used to show off route position, while CTA Bus Tracker never did, including on detours. Maybe @Pace831 is saying that WebWatch (at least the public version) is now more like CTA.

[Pace831]

7 hours ago, Busjack said:

No reason they would necessarily be correlated, as they weren't before. Only change was a server upgrade.

 

4 hours ago, Busjack said:

The one difference seems to be that Pace drivers can (but usually don't) override the IBS by entering something manually into the Luminator box, while some CTA drivers have posted that even if they tried to do so, the Clever Device would reset it to whatever the Clever Device wanted.

What might be new for Pace is that WebWatch used to show off route position, while CTA Bus Tracker never did, including on detours. Maybe @Pace831 is saying that WebWatch (at least the public version) is now more like CTA.

What I have observed is that buses that are not in service usually do not show up on the tracker. The few that do show up have been deadheading either back to the garage or to another route after making the last stop on the first route. I have not seen a bus pulling out of the garage appear on the tracker until it reaches the first stop "in service". Detouring buses do appear on the tracker, such as on route 352 currently. That was the basis for my guess that deadheading buses appearing on the tracker were caused by the operator not doing something to indicate that the bus was out of service. We can see the location of the operator's action that causes the bus to disappear from the tracker. If you leave the map open in your browser, a bus will never disappear from the screen until you refresh the page. When a bus goes out of service, the icon remains in the same place it was when the action occurred. Usually that location would be the last stop on the route. In the example of 6560 above, the bus "froze" on the street about a quarter mile before the garage, but notably not IN the garage as it usually happens. I observed the same with two local buses from Elgin later that night.

[Busjack]

12 minutes ago, Pace831 said:

That was the basis for my guess that deadheading buses appearing on the tracker were caused by the operator not doing something to indicate that the bus was out of service.

However, I doubt that's the case, as opposed to the program in the IBS "saying" that the bus has reached the end of the route. However, what makes me suspicious of the whole thing is that today I actually saw 6439 Out of Service at Pfingsten NB turning onto Dundee EB at about 9:30 a.m. today. somewhere a NW bus shouldn't be. However, about an hour later it was on Webwatch on 422 at Linden. Basically, it (and the 422 that used to be sitting at Golf Mill at about 10 p,m.) raises the issue whether those escapades are in the system.

[Busjack]

20 hours ago, Pace831 said:

Also, they added route 807, as seen in the toolbar on the left. The map trace doesn't work though. Tomorrow we'll have to see whether 2697 or 2698 show up there.

In the afternoon rush, scheduled times show up, but not a bus or predictions. My guess is that it is like 511, i.e. merely loaded onto the server:

[Pace831]

On ‎12‎/‎14‎/‎2016 at 4:43 PM, Busjack said:

In the afternoon rush, scheduled times show up, but not a bus or predictions. My guess is that it is like 511, i.e. merely loaded onto the server:

807 isn't on Webwatch anymore, so probably it was added by mistake.