Transit Bus Bridge Dispatch Board

In public transit, a rail segment can be suspended at short notice by a wire fault, a signal failure or an incident on the track, and riders still need to get between the affected stations. This MoveTheWheels concept illustrates a Bus Bridge board for the operator's bus dispatchers: one page per suspended line that holds the shuttle stops, the buses sent to serve them, the operators driving them and the notice riders are given.

A bus bridge is often pieced together over radio and phone. Dispatchers call depots for spare buses, check which ones are fit to run, look for operators to drive them and pass the stop list to whoever writes the rider notice, while the first riders are already waiting at the station. When the plan changes, the notice can fall behind the buses.

The illustration shows the board under Routes for one line and day, with Update rider notice and End bus bridge buttons. A red banner names the suspended segment, the cause and the time it began, and notes that the bus bridge was started by FluidGrids from a rail control request. Tiles count buses needed, assigned, operators needed and buses still to find. A Shuttle stops panel lists each affected station with the location of its shuttle stop, an accessibility symbol and a Posted badge. A Shuttle buses table gives each bus with the depot it comes from, its operator, its first stop, an estimated arrival and a status: en route, assigned, awaiting an operator and sent to CrewFoundry, or a coach requested from a marketplace provider. A bus that is off road on an AssetHandler work order sits in a hatched row marked Excluded. A Rider notice panel records the plan sent to FluidGrids, the notice approved and published, and the shuttle frequency riders are given, with a Request more buses button.

The board is designed to work with three other Burdenoff products. A rail control request is designed to trigger the FluidGrids workflow that opens the bus bridge, and the stop list and plan are designed to pass back to FluidGrids, which publishes the rider notice to every channel and republishes it when the plan changes. Buses AssetHandler lists as off road are left out, and operator gaps are designed to go to CrewFoundry for extraboard cover. When the depots cannot supply enough buses, a provider listed in the MoveTheWheels marketplace can be requested. Ending the bus bridge is designed to release the buses back to their blocks.