Location and Seat Occupancy Screens Testing On London Double-Decker

June 23, 2014 by Dave Haynes

Transport for London in the UK appears to be testing screens on at least one double-decker bus as a means to tell riders whether there are seats on the upper-level, and where the bus is positioned on its route.

The London blog IanVisits spied screens fixed at the main entry and by the stairs that lead up.

The system uses GPS for location, Open Street Maps for guess what, and the on-board CCTV cameras for video analytics to analyze and report on seat occupancy. Simple sensors would, you’d think, be more accurate on that, but I’m no engineer.

I like this because of the simple, immediately valuable information it conveys. I also like that it doesn’t appear the transport authority sees the need to try to sell ads on the screens, as well.

Can’t find anything official on the TfL site about this, so it is presumably a quiet technical trial.

Photo:IanVisits