Last week there was a delay on the Gold Line trains, which engendered a service alert on the light rail signs, saying that the Gold Line was delayed 15 minutes or more. I don’t have photos of these messages, since the refresh rate of the digital signs interferes with the refresh rate of Apple iPhones.
The issue is that the two rotating service alert messages block out all information about the other two lines (Blue Line and Green Line). Though the signs says Blue Line trains are on schedule, no information is provided about what that schedule is.
The minimum that should be done is to display the regular schedule information in rotation with the service alert messages. Even though the schedule for one of those lines will be incorrect, at least riders know about the not-delayed lines, and most riders can figure out from the service alert messages that the times for the delayed line are not correct.
A better solution would be to have a message display that contains the correct schedule information for not-delayed lines AND the service alert message. In the example from last week, the top lines of the message display would show the regular schedule for not-delayed lines, and the bottom of the display would show the service alert.
It may be that the sign software is not capable of the combined display. The signs are very primitive, and subject to many problems. At any given time, probably one-quarter of the signs are out of service, and another quarter are showing incorrect or unreadable information. When these are reported through the Alert SacRT app or otherwise, they are eventually fixed, but only after thousands of riders have been denied the information they need. The Transit app will provide the desired information, but only if enough people are using it so that it can determine the delay and the location of the train. Much of the time, not enough people are using it. The light rail cars do not have GPS units, so the only way of determining their location is through people’s smartphones.
Sacramento Transit Advocates and Riders (STAR) 