Nottingham City Transport using SMS

Nottingham City Transport have decided to use SMS for timetable info. WAP still quite a minority product, so they thought text messaging.

You might have seen the ad on TV a little while ago. Kids in a Swedish suberb, using a WAP phone, to get the times of the next tram, so they can throw snowballs at it when it passes! Advertising Nokia phones.

Well, I rang Nottingham City Transport [especially as we now have a tram system being built here !] and asked if we were going to have such a service and apparently, there are no such plans. [i did say i didn’t want to throw snowballs at them!] .

However, the Mathematics Department of Nottingham Trent University, have developed a system using SMS. This being more common. All bus stops here, now have a reference number on them. So what you do, is send a SMS text message to the system like.

City to ma07

City is a ‘recognised word’ and ma07 is the stop outside my house. System then replies to my phone, and tells me when the next bus home is. Not quite as exciting as the Swedish example here, but hey, this is England. It’ll take a little longer, yet!

ATTAIN – Advanced Traffic and Travel Information system

The ATTAIN project is an EPSRC-funded Feasibility Study that investigates the principles and practicalities of integration of various traffic and travel information (lane occupancy, bus location, bus timetables, etc.) for the purpose of providing intelligent urban travel advice. ATTAIN is a collaborative project involving the Intelligent Simulation and Modelling (ISM) group at the Nottingham Trent University and the Nottingham Traffic Control Centre, Nottingham City Transport, MIRA Ltd., and the NSL.

Has potential though, don’t you think. More info on their site at:

http://www.dcm.ntu.ac.uk/RTTS/Projects/grr32468/attain.html

This poster describes the use of the sysytem

http://www.dcm.ntu.ac.uk/RTTS/Projects/grr32468/poster9s.jpg