Countdown feed - bus stop messages

1

I’ve just been looking at the Countdown feed and the bus stop messages it contains. A lot of stops are carrying a promotional messages such as “Route SL3 is a new express Superloop route serving stops in Thamesmead, Abbey Wood, Bexleyheath, Sidcup, Chislehurst & Bromley. Route SL3 operates every 12 minutes during Monday to Saturday daytimes and operates every 15 minutes during evenings & Sundays.” which if I’ve got my field names and values the correct way around, has been given a MessagePriority of ‘3’. There are similar messages for the SL2 and SL5.

According to the Countdown API documentation, MessagePriority level 3 relates to “Major incidents – bus” - ‘Severe delays, Diversions (leaving stops unserved and/or causing significant disruption), Route suspensions and curtailments & Stop closures’, so shouldn’t this promotional message be a different priority, maybe 5 or one of the unused 7-10 and leave 3 for it’s intended purpose?

Simon

2

Hi Simon, I think MessagePriority is of limited use, to be honest. Almost all messages have a priority of 3, which is the default. I had a look at the training materials for Countdown, and setting the priority is not one of the steps covered for creating a message.