I'm confused by this. The bus drivers complained about being distracted by the computers, so now can't use them if the buses are moving? Couldn't they just choose not to use them before if it was distracting? Were they complaining about fellow drivers doing this? I am not sure what the big improvement is, unless it is just preventing folks from doing something they already knew they shouldn't?
I'm guessing the bus drivers who complained to mgmt are "A-Team" drivers, and they were complaining about their comrades who "compute while driving" which make them all look bad when something happens.
The fact that they can use the software to prevent the drivers from using the computer while driving is a great feature. You can counteract stupidity automatically.
This sort of thing has long made me wonder... If you're staying at a WDW resort and are using a KTTK like so many, Disney should know instantly that X number of people from that resort are in this park, Y number of people are in that park, etc. With that info, it should be pretty simple for Disney to see that 40% of that resort's guests are here, 30% are there, etc and try to assign bus routes or be flexible for bus routes accordingly. I fully accept that those guests staying with room only reservations or guests with AP's would skew the totals - but even so - I'd sure beat seeing the three buses for the WL waiting at their stop outside Epcot with nobody waiting to board and three buses plus worth of folks waiting for a POFQ bus to arrive...
Great in theory, but like you said, the skewed results would be reason enough to not rely on the data. There's no way to know at any given moment how many of the "paper ticket" or AP holders are in any given park. The "skew" could be several thousands, which would render the information useless.
This got me thinking differently than normal. This issue is the resort they are heading to pick up from some park. Could be that the bus started at WL, dropped off at Epcot and then was heading to POP to head to MK.
The POP stop at Epcot might be empty, but the line at POP to MK is overflowing.
That might cause some of the multiple buses to an empty stop. Would it be better that the bus stopped at no stop at Epcot? No easy answer.
You're exactly right about the obtuse routing that some buses end up taking. But that's the actual beauty of the dispatch system (if it were being used to its fullest potential). You can't guarantee 20-min wait times for most locations if you just had one or two buses running a loop between a park and a resort.
But if each bus sent a signal when it was leaving a stop, the system would start a timer and when the 20-min mark was approaching, it would send the closest "available" or "no-destination" bus to that stop when appropriate. This could be done as simply as the driver hitting a button on the computer called "DEPARTING" when he was ready to pull away from a stop. With the GPS, the system would know what stop he was leaving.
Then, the system could automatically send the bus's next instructions, and change the marquee. The driver would see his next "destination" on the screen and pull into the correct stop.
I'm not exactly sure what method they use to judge how many people are in line at any given stop, but it's obviously a severely flawed method. I too have been at a stop after park closing, and have literally seen 3 buses pull into and out of another stop while my stop had 0. I've even seen buses pull up to nearly empty stops and WAIT while 300 people stood in my line.
While it would require more staff, the only way to ACTUALLY dispatch buses based on need is to have a visual on each stop. That would mean a spotter that's physically at each depot who radios into dispatch with continuous "needs assessments" or a series of cameras at all the depots that allow someone in a central control room to monitor bus stops and enter the "need for a bus" right into the computer. The camera system would require significantly fewer personnel, and double as an extra means of security (at least at bus stops).
I just hope that someday they actually take advantage of the gigantic resource they're sitting on - the MiM system. Having some schlub in a van sit at the entrance to the MK depot telling each bus where to go is the most insane "system" I've ever seen.
