Introducing myTrip departure boards for over 50 operators

Today, we’re pleased to announce that we have launched stop departure boards in our popular myTrip app so that passengers can conveniently access upcoming departures for their favourite stops. This latest development adds bus stop departure boards to the app, showing departure times for the buses that serve them from myTrip’s 50+ bus operators.

The app update builds on the release of the departure board capability in myTrip operator websites, and enhances convenience by combining real-time information feeds from individual sites into a single app experience.

When viewing a departure board for a stop, passengers can see upcoming departures as either real-time information (RTI) from SIRI-SM or scheduled information from TransXChange (TXC), depending on the configuration and data available for each operator.

Passengers can access departure boards by navigating to Live Buses from the main menu, tapping on a stop they are interested in, and then tapping on ‘Departures’ from the bottom sheet that appears. The departure board will display lines that serve the stop and up to 30 upcoming departures, distinguishing between those based on RTI and those derived from scheduled data. An explanation is displayed for first-time users to help them understand the times.

Each departure can then be tapped, taking the user to a journey view screen showing the journey’s stops and times, plus the live locations of all vehicles currently running on the chosen route—further helping passengers to visualise where the bus is relative to the stop they are interested in.

New tools to ensure high quality network data

To enable this new capability in the myTrip app, Passenger has been working closely with myTrip operators to configure the necessary real-time data feeds and ensure the app’s underlying bus network data is accurate. With the launch of departure boards, the scheduled network data already uploaded to myTrip, previously used as a basis for live bus tracking, is now made visible to passengers for the first time, placing an increased importance on its accuracy and completeness.

To achieve this, data quality tools within Passenger Cloud have been made available to myTrip operators so that they can directly check the accuracy and completeness of their published TXC data.

myTrip has been designed to be as easy as possible for bus operators to get on board. Being part of the platform provides operators with access to customer support via our Help Desk and a whole host of marketing collateral that can be used to promote the benefits of mobile ticketing and live bus tracking to passengers.

As such, we’ve updated our Operator Marketing Pack with new graphics to support the promotion of the new departure board capability. These assets have been designed for use on social media channels and are available immediately alongside the existing seasonal graphics.

If you’d like to find out more about myTrip and how you can offer departure boards to your passengers, please drop us a line today.