Saw a post on Reddit about “Hailo”. Seem to be a QLD based company (by address) but currently only launched on Ventura operated buses in Melbourne. Allows hailing a bus through app (With the aim of improving accessibility). Seems to be done via integration with the Consat driver console.
What is Hailo
Hailo: A World-First in Accessible Travel
Hailo lets you hail your bus digitally - straight from your mobile. With just a tap, your driver receives the message and knows exactly where to stop, including any accessibility needs.
No more missed buses. No more uncertainty. Just smarter, stress-free travel.
The problem with that is that it depends on Consat equipment, which is quite rare on buses across SEQ and it still has some glaring issues in terms of information displaying (like inflexible destination blinds).
In BCC land it’s a bit of a salad, with Luminator (former Mobitec), Hanover and Thoreb providing destos to the fleets.
Clarks seems to be going all in on Consat, while Transdev has apparently removed the same equipment on their Volvo electrics.
In my experience with Kinetic, the buses with the system (all BYD electrics on the 777) have almost all of their passenger screens dead and I’m not particularly sure who to call to fix them.
Credit where it’s due this afternoon, Translink Customer Service representative spent 15 minutes trying to find out why the Journey Planner/Service Updates page for the 23rd to the 27th haven’t got any closures listed despite QR saying otherwise (it’s third party closures, they’ve been listed for a couple months on the Queensland Rail calendar)
Translink list closures for literally the rest of the month.
I got told: As of now, the Journey Planner is only reflecting journeys that are available until 24th of May. Unfortunately, Journey Planner takes time to update. We suggest to use “service updates” option as it’s the most accurate and to check Journey Planner closer to the date to see if service updates reflect on Journey Planner.
I have already raised this with our team and our dedicated team will inform us once Journey Planner has been updated with track closure or railbus information for the month of May.
I hope they rectify it soon, don’t know how such a thing can get missed especially when I can start being able to plan my journey for these dates from this week
Might be a fluke or something weird, but from what I’ve seen it looks like translink might be testing out real time info for school bus services, as well as the weirdo shopper run from Toorbul to Morayfield (numbered 9999).
Currently school runs 3125 (Kinetic Surfside) and 6235 (Bus Queensland, Westside) are the ones with data broadcasted.
(Big thanks as usual to James and the Bus Tracker Network for keeping archives of these services.)
Another thing I’ve been noticing is that the GTFS-RT feed is being slowly updated with bus routes across SEQ now having a more consistent [suburb], [street name] naming scheme.
501 to Ipswich, Bell St (it should be Ipswich station, Bell St)
281 to Redland Bay, Shorneline Ave (it should be Shoreline Ave)
Just to add to that - the 6235 has schedule data in the main SEQ GTFS file, and is signed into with a proper Trip ID - whereas 3125 is not, it appears as an unplanned trip (same as the 7xx school routes in Brisbane).
It could be that they are testing school routes, but I haven’t seen any communication surrounding it. This did happen a couple of years ago (also with Westside) on route 5273/6273 but lasted only a month before been removed.
And good work on spotting those lott - I’m impressed.
According to Translink, Journey Planner is experiencing issues this evening.
They’re doing updates and trips and timetables may display incorrectly or not appear.
As of 8:28pm, Journey Planning Services are intermittently available. The Translink App remains unaffected. The ETA for full resolution is still unknown. So the App should not have any issue planning a journey.
