Operators now have the choice of displaying cancelled journeys on departure boards, so they can provide clarity for customers by making it explicit that a specific journey is cancelled.
Operators can configure their journey cancellation settings in Passenger Cloud by navigating to Network, Journey Cancellations, and then selecting a new Settings option from the left-hand menu. There are three possible options:
- Omit cancelled journeys
- Show cancelled journeys
- Show cancelled journeys unless there is a duplicate service arriving within x minutes.
Option 1 is the default and current behaviour, where cancelled journeys will not be displayed on departure boards. Selecting Option 2 will mean that cancelled journeys will always be displayed on departure boards.
With option 3 operators can show that a journey is cancelled except when it is followed by the same service within X minutes in which case it will not be displayed. Operators can set X to any minute value. With this option, operators can ensure their customers see cancellations in specific situations, but not in others. For example:
- If it’s the last journey of the day the cancellation will display
- If it’s an infrequent service and the following service is more than x minutes away, then the cancellation will display
- If multiple consecutive journeys are cancelled, and the next possible service is more than x minutes away, then the cancellation will display
- If it’s a line with a high frequency and the following service is less than x minutes away, then the cancellation will not display because the customer can catch the next bus promptly
We consider a service to be a duplicate if it has the same direction, line, and destination. By including the destination the departure will continue to be explicit about cancelled journeys that may impact customers in cases where a line runs short.
Where cancellations are taken from SIRI-SM data, we will also apply these settings so that the behaviour is predictable for operators and consistent for customers.
The UI across all departure boards has been revised to help customers quickly understand whether the service is displaying real-time information, scheduled information, or is cancelled.
We will release this change on Tuesday, 19th December. It will be available in Passenger Cloud, websites, and apps from version 56. For more information please get in touch with your Customer Success Manager.