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There are volume controls included for the CAD, but I have never got them to work for the announcements, just for the radio.

Yeah that is what I found out on Monday and Tuesday this week when I tested it as well.

6076 has had the holes drilled to the correct size for the LED sign.

Photo captured at the Sandstone Terminal! I was out of the bus at the time!

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Since I often drive XD40's these days, more than any other type of bus, I often get buses without CAD. Have to say its nice to hear what is going on and not have it hijack my destination sign.

Also there seemed to be a glitch this week. I pressed '0' and blanked my sign so that it would say 'Lest we forget' while heading back to the garage. As I get off Deerfoot it changes to show 'out of service' alternating with 'Lest we forget'. Then while I am waiting for the farebox to be unloaded it changes to show '45 Applewood' instead of 'out of service'. On top of that as I was about to log out it rebooted. Then when I returned later that night with a second bus it too rebooted before I could log out.

I wasn't alone with this!

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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 months later...
  • 2 years later...

http://www.metronews.ca/news/calgary/2017/09/11/calgary-s-next-stop-transit-system-impaired-coun-gian-carlo-carra.html

Parts of this were frustrating and disappointing to read, and I was planning to make a post about it, until....

I rode 8221 on the 4 tonight. It (seemed to) announce every stop between 78 Ave and downtown. All of the stops on Edmonton Trail, the 4th Street NE stops, even the stop at the top of the bus trap.

None of the 'new' announcements showed up on the LED display and the TTS inflection is a bit different, but the announcements were there and that's all that matters. I really do hope this is something being rolled out across the system because it would be such a help to so many people.

 

- 14 Ave, 10 Ave, and 6 Ave are the stops that didn't used to be announced.

Anyone noticed this on other buses or routes?

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Why should they do that, when there's perfectly good systems from North American vendors?

CT certainly seems to have picked the wrong horse in a few cases. Fare collection comes to mind as well. 

Edmonton's doing just fine with their system from Trapeze. I just wish they would do a bit more with arrival/ departure signs at major stops and transit centres.

 

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I rode both a route 2 and a route 3 today which were announcing (very nearly) every stop.

Seems like even with the new announcements, the occasional stop is still skipped - and yeah, at each 'new' stop the LED sign just scrolls whatever the previous 'major' stop was.

Not perfect but still a huge improvement.

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Okay I'm sorry but Edmonton's announcements are beautiful, even with a detour the bus corrects itself within a stop or two when back on route. 

I rode route 5 today from 1 Ave to 17 Ave NE and the stop announcements said "Edmonton Trail......and........____......av......." while the board kept scrolling "Edmonton Trail and 6 or 8 Avenue"

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The 5, eh? Interesting. I've been on a couple 5s over the past couple days and none have had the new announcements.

I'm trying to piece together how they're actually being rolled out. So far, it's just the 2, 3, and 4 I've been on which have had them. The 5, 6, 7, 90, and 301s I've ridden have not. And I rode 8221 again on the 8 tonight - no difference, even though it had new announcements on the 4.

Most of the stops it still fails to announce are ones with non standard cross street names. Anything with a numbered cross street/avenue is announced but, for example, the following stops all are not:

Quote

SB Centre ST N @ Laycock DR

SB Centre ST N @ Across from Samis RD NE    

SB Elbow DR @ Sifton BV SW    

SB Elbow DR @ Lansdowne AV SW    

SB Elbow DR @ Britannia DR SW    

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10 hours ago, 1604 said:

The 5, eh? Interesting. I've been on a couple 5s over the past couple days and none have had the new announcements.

I'm trying to piece together how they're actually being rolled out. So far, it's just the 2, 3, and 4 I've been on which have had them. The 5, 6, 7, 90, and 301s I've ridden have not. And I rode 8221 again on the 8 tonight - no difference, even though it had new announcements on the 4.

Most of the stops it still fails to announce are ones with non standard cross street names. Anything with a numbered cross street/avenue is announced but, for example, the following stops all are not:

I honestly cannot understand the system for how stops get announced. They all seem kinda random.

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The system was bought from Xerox for CAD $14.5 million, but it was originally developed by Orbital Sciences (hence the OrbCAD and OrbStar names), who were then acquired by ACS in 2008, who were then acquired by Xerox in 2010. Now Xerox has spun off ACS into a new company known as Conduent.

They've since announced a new system (and check out what's on the screen in the provided picture!) which seems like a big change. I'm not sure if any agencies are using it yet though.

 

I've never gotten the sense that the 'major stops only' announcement setup is a technical limitation of the system, but is rather a choice from CT. The Metro article linked above seems to suggest there is a technical issue with the system causing it to miss announcements for lots of stops, but this has not been my experience at all. Where a stop is actually announced on a route, it is generally very consistent in announcing that stop in the same physical spot, even between different models of bus.

 

Los Angeles and San Francisco, in addition to other smaller cities, also use the system.

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I wasn't expecting this one: route 25 has announcements at most stops. A promising sign!

 

On 9/12/2017 at 10:30 PM, Blake M said:

even with a detour the bus corrects itself within a stop or two when back on route. 

I was curious about how this worked here but it seems to be just as good - the route 3 is on detour (completely skipping 4th St SB) this weekend and as soon as we turned onto Elbow Dr, it was announcing the first non-skipped stop (29 Ave).

Transit55 is not working because CT's data feed is stuck - hopefully fixed tomorrow.

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  • 1 month later...
On 9/13/2017 at 10:49 PM, 1604 said:

Most of the stops it still fails to announce are ones with non standard cross street names. Anything with a numbered cross street/avenue is announced but, for example, the following stops all are not:

SB Centre ST N @ Laycock DR

SB Centre ST N @ Across from Samis RD NE    

SB Elbow DR @ Sifton BV SW    

SB Elbow DR @ Lansdowne AV SW    

SB Elbow DR @ Britannia DR SW    

Seems as though another update has gone out - these stops are now announced. The missing stops on the 4 and 5 are added in as well. Edit: stops on the 5 and probably the 4 with "North Haven Dr" are still missing.

Route 10 and 32 also announce all stops now.

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The signs themselves are still displaying the wrong intersections on the routes where there's an announcement for most stops. For instance, on route 3 Northbound from Heritage, it only displays Elbpw Drive and 34/68/75 avenues, but displays those at every stop

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