Schroedinger's Bus

[angharad_gam]

 I am generally pretty happy about the public transport in Adelaide,  especially since there's  bus route about 500m from  my house that goes direct into the city (and back again) every 15 mins during rush hour. However, if I have one complaint it's that the bus that supposedly leaves the city at 5:25pm frequently either doesn't show, or arrives so late it might as well be the 5:40 bus anyway. You would think I would have learned by now to not bother showing up until 5:40, but I  tend to leave work when I have run out of either brain or things to do for the day, rather than at a specific time, so it's not unusual for me to turn up in the vain hope that the bus will also do so. After all, 15 minutes is not really that long to wait if it doesn't  (unless it's 42C out of course). They have recently installed those 'real-time' electronic signs at my bus stop in the city and it has only further highlighted the liminal nature of the 5:25 bus. This is what happened the other day:

Angharad arrives at bus stop a bit early for the 5:25. Sign states it is 8 minutes away.
Wait 7 minutes. Sign states bus is 1 minute away.
Wait 5 minutes, during which time the two buses listed as arriving after my bus come and go. Sign still states bus is one minute away.
Bus dissappears from sign.
Next bus appears at bottom of sign. Sign states this bus is 11 minutes away.
Wait 5 minutes. Sign now states 5:40 bus is 6 minutes away.
5:25 bus appears at top of sign. Sign states it is two minutes away. 
Wait 1 minute. Sign now states one bus is 1 minute away and another bus is 5 minutes away.
Wait 1 minute. Bus listed as arriving after my bus shows up. Sign states one bus is 1 minute away and another bus is 4 minutes away.
Bus actually shows up!

Comments

[reverancepavane]

This is a problem with a lot of the private services (such as SERCO) that follow the same route as the public (STA) services (especially they use the same pool of buses). Whilst technically they will satisfy the average wait time of 15 minutes, they will often delay the run of the private bus so they can increase the number of passengers they will pick up compared to the following public bus. So you end up getting two buses effectively travelling the same route within five minutes of each other, but which still averages out to four buses an hour.

One of the many "benefits" of outsourcing.

[angharad_gam]

Yeah, that sounds about right...