When checking my buses on Wandsworth Bridge Road the last 2 weeks, Google maps says a 295 is coming… but a 28 comes instead.
I checked with the bus driver - it’s not wrongly labeled. I don’t get on the bus cos it’s not my bus, but then on Google maps it says my bus has passed.
This repeats for the next 295 coming according to Google maps. In each case it’s a 28 which, when it passes, Google says my 295 has departed.
This has been happening for 2 weeks. I couldn’t find any way to report this on Google Maps. I can only say how crowded the bus was.
In the picture I’ve circled the so-called 295 which was in fact a 28.
This is very annoying.
For me this happens in the morning during rush hour, each time, I don’t stick around as I’ve made the mistake a couple of times already where this happens for the next 2 buses. Therefore I just run to another bus stop for the C3.
There is currently an issue with predictions on the 295 route due to a schedule change that has not yet been reflected in iBus due to unavailabilty of systems due to the cyber incident.
I’m not sure why Google is interpreting predictions for the 28 for that stop as being 295 but I think they let you report issues at the bottom of the journey result:
@jamesevans
At the risk of stating the bl***ing obvious, the longer this goes on, the more routes are going to see schedule changes and the predictions will be misleading for more routes.
London Vehicle Finder shows just one bus out on the 295 today. I can only assume that it happens to be the only one for which new and old schedules match.
The W9 appears to have been showing no buses in operation at all on London Vehicle Finder, though it is undoubtedly running. The schedule changed in mid-September when Metroline took over.
Most other routes which have changes recently (such as R68 R70 H91) appear to be reporting fully. It is a bit of a mystery to me why iBus seems to have been able to take these on but not (it seems) the 295 and W9.
Presumably to answer your query you need to look at the precise nature of each schedule revision. If it is minor timing changes I guess the system can continue to use the previous schedule to determine which vehicles to monitor when making predictions for a stop. On the other hand, if some or all vehicles have changed (e.g. a new operator for W9) the system would be lost without the new schedule.
@misar
The R68 and R70 revisions last weekend were temporary timetables with widened frequencies so the entire schedules are likely to be different, at least in daytime. But they are providing full predictions. So I doubt it is directly related to the nature of the change.
I suspect the real reason is more humdrum. Of the 8 schedules hat @jamesevans listed, 5 are known to date from 21/9 and one from 28/9 (I don’t know about the dates for the 284 and 295) and I suspect they would have been processed earlier, thus in the early days of the crisis. It would not surprise me at all if things went a bit doolally in the early days and shortcuts were taken, either because the process was unclear or in order to get the schedules operational at all. By now, maybe things have settled down to a “new normal” and a clearer process is in place.
But then again, someone might just have been having a bad day…
