This material was produced by the Royal Society of New Zealand (RSNZ)
under contract to the Ministry of Education in 2000 and 2001. It was written
to assist teachers and schools in their delivery of the technology/ hangarau
curriculum statements. The project was jointly coordinated by personnel
from the Technology Education New Zealand (TENZ)
and National Association of Māori Mathematicians, Scientists and Technologists
(NAMMSAT) networks. Monitoring and evaluation of the material was carried
out by a national project advisory group.
An April 2001 article in the Christchurch Press alerted us to
the news that, for commuters in the city, not knowing when the next
bus is due may soon be a thing of the past.
Electronic displays will soon be fitted to 300 bus stops around the
city. This will show waiting passengers where the next bus is actually
located, thus alerting them to how long it might take before the bus
arrives. The bus-tracking, or real time bus system, uses a GPS receiver
in each bus. A central computer polls these regularly and compares actual
bus positions with the planned schedules.
Those responsible for the introduction of the new system admit that
it has not been without its teething problems. These have been partly
due to the requirement to develop the new system while it is actually
working, and at the same time as the bus network in the city is being
converted from a hub-and-spoke network centred on Cathedral Square to
a peripheral-terminus network with buses passing through the interchange.
Despite these difficulties it is claimed that the system now works with
99.7 percent accuracy at the bus interchange.
Once successfully installed in Christchurch, the developers have targeted
another 3600 cities around the world as potential customers. Sales to
only a tenth of this market would generate income of more than $1 billion
Ideas for classroom use
This is an example of a technological system that has had to be developed
and implemented in parallel with the system it is monitoring. In this
type of technological challenge the risks of failure can be high.
When we got the order we had an idea and a concept of how to do it,
and basically we wrote all the code. We took a punt and we pulled it
off.
Robert Burke, developer.
Two types of network are mentioned as operating in the city. The advantages
and disadvantages of these and other potential network models could
be explored.
This could be extended to transport systems in general.
