Artificial Intelligence / un-intelligence has been with us for years - though it's now multiple order of magnitudes more powerful and sophisticated.   I can look back to around 1980 and a research project at UMIST which was logging / registering lift usage (see, I was into guided transport in those days - all be it vertical) to help program for vehicles (lifts) to be at the optimum place to provide efficiency in numbers and speeds of wait times, loadings and journeys.   It is with us on rail, but still makes a laughing stock of itself from time to time - look at this from Wednesday evening:


That's two trains from the same platform at the same time - no, I don't think so!  I - predicted to the folks I was with - that the Swindon train would be 4 or 5 minutes late and, sure, it was.  Not a problem for any of us.

Here are two screen shots from earlier in the evening:



Really - the "this train is delayed by 1 minute" stuff is really a case of TMI (too much information) ... and by saying "DELAYED" without any qualification seems designed to worry.    Sure, that reverted a few minutes later to "On Time" ...

And look at this when we arrived in Trowbridge:


Nothing automated in there - just an out of date / missing notice.   Someone has clearly identified the need for people arriving to know how to call a taxi, but all the work / cost of putting in a notice board is of no presesnt use when the frame is empty.  "We know you need taxi numbers, but we're not supplying them".  Think that ONE sign saying "Taxi Phone Numbers" rather than three close to each other would have sufficed, and the cost saving could have been invested in supplying the actual data - or how about a dymanic screen that tells you which taxis are running at the time and with availability?  Or dare I suggest Uber, who have identified the market

 
Yes I've noticed the predicted train platform concurrency issue a few times, including yesterday (at Trowbridge).

But something that might stretch AI a bit (but not much) more is something else I noticed yesterday, not for the first time. My Trowbridge-Bristol train was running late, and before it joined the Paddington-Bristol mainline outside Bath it was showing as arriving in Bath before the Paddington-Penzance service.

However I was pretty certain that priority would be given to the Penzance train, and sure enough we stopped to allow it to go ahead of us. A well trained AI would have had no trouble in predicting the correct outcome.

 
Yes the information systems are far from perfect at the moment. Many will know that the track through Frome Station is single. At around 09.00 each weekday morning there are three passenger trains scheduled to call within 11 minutes - a tall order. In order - up GLC, up PLY-PAD and down WEY.  The PLY - PAD service nearly always loses time somewhere from TAU onwards (for no obvious reason).

So the service rarely works as advertised with the up PAD and the down WEY invariably late. So the information display can show some quite interesting and unachievable predictions during this time and either remaining inaccurate or offering last minute corrections which can "surprise" some of the unfamiliar passengers. Naturally the express tends to get priority unless it is significantly late.

The timetabling is very optimistic and maybe AI will assist with the infomation systems in future. The express service is one of the more recent enhancements in Frome with now 3 morning through services to PAD and the SWR services to WAT.     

 
Every time I'm at Frome, which isn't often, there's a train calls, full of fresh air, and heading for Waterloo, and I think it's done to annoy me.

 

Please pardon my confusion, but is there really a direct service through Frome to Glasgow Central (GLC) ?

 

Don't see why not.....................this one appears to run from Salisbury !

 
The first is not AI, and the second isn't either....


If a train is stuck at a platform or red light, it is marked "delayed" after being 3 minutes errr....delayed. Until it gets on the move, the computer knows not how much longer it will be errr....delayed, and so sticks a service as marked "delayed" until such times that it moves again and is picked up at the next sensor, then it can calculate how late or On Time it might be, and update displays. AI doesn't come anywhere near it.


That's competition for you. One driver who isn't listed removes the list so that everyone stands an equal chance. Often they leave their own business card attached instead. Occasionally, a passenger nicks the page for their own use - a lot less often now in the days of phone cameras though.