There are 8,500 bus stops in Lancashire and it is planned that by 2008 they will all be showing stop-specific timetable information. It’s a massive task, but one which has been simplified through the county’s use of their Omnibus products.
“In the last 12 months, since we started using the full capability of OmniSTOP to produce individual timetables, we have increased the number of stops with specific information from around 10% of the total in the county to around 25%”, says Lancashire County Council’s Ian Barratt. That is a benefit which is immediately visible to the county’s bus users.
OmniSTOP has made this task much easier, Ian Barratt says, and in particular it has been able to incorporate SMS codes for each stop, which will become increasingly important as the SMS system is rolled out to more services.
All of which is a far cry from the established practice of simply posting a timetable showing the entire route, leaving users to work out for themselves when a bus would be due at a stop which was not shown as a timing point. Behind the OmniSTOP information is Lancashire’s use of OmniTIMES, which does much more than just produce bus timetables. OmniTIMES is used to support the information used by the county’s PTI call centre, and the same data set is used by two neighbouring authorities, Greater Manchester and Merseyside, to support their call centres. The OmniTIMES data is also used on the Department for Transport’s journey planning website.
“There are big advantages in having one data set from which we can run everything,” Ian Barratt continues, “and in being able to work with mapping software too.” There are also wider benefits. Consider the county’s Local Transport Plan, where there are targets to provide appropriate levels of bus service to communities of different sizes.
With the support of OmniTIMES, Lancashire County Council’s transport planners are able to calculate service levels for communities large and small throughout the county, and to then check whether or not the services meet the targets.
OmniTIMES and OmniSTOP have dramatically changed – and speeded up – the process by which Lancashire County Council plan timetables and distribute the information through various agencies utilising a wide range of media. “I am very impressed,” Ian Barratt concludes. “Omnibus has proved to be a good company to work with. They are good partners.”
