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As the Wheel Turns

By Hamutal Dotan

Last month we set out to explain why next-stop announcements sometimes get borked. The reason? To determine the location of a bus at any given time, the announcement system relies on counting the wheel rotations, which establish how far the vehicle has travelled and thus where it is on its route. When the snow gets bad and a bus spins its wheels, the announcement system gets confused. And now, finally, word from the TTC as to when the buses will be upgraded to a more sophisticated GPS tracking system. Bruno Papa, Executive Communications Representative at the TTC, sent us an email update recently: “[T]he conversion of our bus fleet is scheduled to start June 30, 2009. This process will take approximately 6-8 months to complete as the work encompasses several different initiatives.” So not for whatever remains of this winter, but hopefully for next, we can count on that soothing voice to reliably tell us if we’re there yet.

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  • http://www.RohanJayasekera.com/ Rohan Jayasekera

    I hope that one of the other “initiatives” is to improve some of the street names, e.g. when streetcars on Roncesvalles approach a certain intersection the announcement system says “Queensway”. Anyone wanting to get off at Queen can easily miss the stop. “Queen and Queensway” would be a big improvement.

  • http://null joeclark

    Well, that was just a theory I had. I have no evidence that the drive wheels are the ones monitored, which would be a necessity for my theory to be correct. In other words, when the Christie bus is trying to dig itself out of a snowbank, the front wheels aren’t the ones spinning.