New bus stop display boards installed last summer are still not reliably working and won’t be fixed until the end of February.
The new boards were meant to be an upgrade on the 20-year-old boards they replaced last year when Vix Technology was awarded a council contract to install them.
But many – particularly those at the city’s biggest and busiest stops – have been full of glitches and often left blank.
Now, the contractor is conducting an audit of all the boards, and it’s hoped all will be working by February.
Councillor Trevor Muten, cabinet member for transport, said: “We completely understand people’s frustration at the unreliability of some of the bus stop display boards and have been challenging the contractor on this.
“In addition to an ongoing review of the contractor’s delivery plan, an audit of all the city’s bus display boards is nearing completion to ensure all boards that are not working are identified and repaired.
“The audit and repair work is being funded by our contractor and not the council.
“We are very disappointed in the contractor’s failings and apologise to residents for the inconvenience this has caused them.
“We expect the contractor to have this completed by the end of February.”
A spokesperson for Vix Technology, which was awarded the £6 million contract by Brighton and Hove City Council and East Sussex County Council, said: “Vix Technology understands the frustration caused by issues affecting some of the new bus information displays installed across Brighton and Hove as part of the city council’s real-time information upgrade programme.
“The programme has experienced some challenges within the manufacturing supply chain, and with installation partners. However, we are now making good progress and are working closely with our suppliers and Brighton and Hove City Council to resolve the remaining issues as quickly as possible.
“This project introduces a new generation of passenger information displays delivered on Vix Technology’s platform, designed to provide a more reliable, accessible and improved experience for passengers.
“Our priority is to ensure the displays meet the expected standards, and will fulfil their role in supporting confident passenger journeys.”
Also what is annoying that when they do work, and the Sunshine is on them you can hardly see the Time Display-those Orange Lettering was really Good & Bright-hopefully Vix will sort that when these Works are being done.
The signs are a retrograde step – the orange ones were much easier to view. Furthermore, we still have stops without posts but no signs …..
Both stops at Nestor Court have has their signs removed during the recent ridiculous move to “island” bus stops. I wonder when the council / Vix are thinking about replacing them…..several months down the line…..
Despite the £27.9m Better Buses grant from the DTI, the council allegedly opted for a downmarket digital information board upgrade which tells passengers to check the paper bus timetables for the next buses and do not show up in bright sunshine. They have also moved and removed a number of useful city bus stops to disimprove bus services.
There’s always the bus app, which I find pretty accurate, I suppose they’ll get them sorted one day, maybe.
We have had a new display board outside our house at the Brighton university bus stop going south that has not worked since installed and we are really fed up with the display which has been rolling around and around foe the past two months at least
It would be interesting to know whether the terms of the contract included a penalty for not meeting a deadline for completion. Sadly, I suspect that a Freedom of Information Request to enquire about this would be rebuffed with the excuse “this is commercially sensitive information”.
My friend Joe Stains is from Sweden; he sent me this article and said that in Sweden, this would have been fixed within hours….
Broken Britain
Except Vix is an American company!
Australian.
Let’s not beat about the bush. The outlay on these new boards has represented an appalling waste of money. Far from being an upgrade, they are harder to read and carry even less information than the previous boards, which worked satisfactorily for bus passengers for more than two decades. How can the new technology be so demonstrably poorer than the previous old-school tech that did the job perfectly well? And that’s not to mention the large number of new boards that have never worked, only partly work or are impossible to read. Who is taking responsibility for spending the money? Why and why did this company get the deal? Will they be apologising to the hundreds of thousands of passengers who use the city’s buses? Let’s hear what Vix Technology have to say about the next-to-useless system they’ve palmed off on to the council, bus company and tax-paying public.
And even when they’re working the board information is not accurate and not in real time. For example, buses are shown as ‘due’ 5 minutes after they have left. The phone app is better
Don’t like any new technology mostly, I just prefer to read. I’ve got learning issues anyway so I’m happy with minimal technology as lot of it goes down or doesn’t seem to work anyway whether it’s phone or in stores or on streets. We shouldn’t rely on it that’s all, old school was great, is great, especially for the difference in abilities of everyone on Earth now
The “new” boards are an abomination. Most of them you can’t read when the sun is out and the rest either don’t work or aren’t even on. This is a typical example of how you should use the theory “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. The old ones were far better than the shambolic ones we have now.
How is this all taking so long. As others have said some of these boards haven’t worked since installation in August. Identify all the faulty ones? Two days drive round at most (for that matter how come their control system doesn’t tell them if signs have any issues?) this outfit needs to get their fingers out.