New audio/visual equipment at Wellington Station

On Monday 1 June 2020, Metlink unveiled a range of audio and visual improvements at Wellington Railway Station aimed to better inform passengers about their journeys and safety.

The old Customer Information System no longer met commuters’ requirements. We, along with our Metlink rail operators Transdev, recognized a need to improve the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery of travel information to customers using the Wellington Railway Station.

The old system, called “Shipley’s”, was built in the 1990s and was no longer fit for purpose for a modern railway station and was past its useful life. It used older style dot matrix displays and the backend system was unreliable with little resilience.

Ultimately, the main driver behind this was to provide better information to our customers at the station.

Planning

Work began on replacing the old system 4 years ago.

In 2017, Greater Wellington asked for Registrations of Interest to identify credible providers who have the capacity, capability, experience and a demonstrable successful track record in the design, installation and support of Real Time Passenger Information Systems within the Public Transport Sector.

Following 9 submissions, 3 of which were shortlisted, we spent significant time finalising the technical specifications of the project before going to tender 7 September 2018.

On 12 December, Barton Sound Limited was announced as preferred tenderer, they proposed a solution using modern hardware with a software solution from Simpleway. On 25 March, we began our contract with Barton Sound.

We went through a long design phase of the project (up to September 2019), informed by expertise both from our customer experience team had lots of input from our Metlink operators at Transdev.

From September 2019 to launch on 1 July 2020, the system was undergoing construction on-site.

Features

A giant LED jumbotron screen is at the centre of the improvements showing train departures as well important safety information. 

New entrance displays, improved audio announcements, a wifi hearing loop, double sided colour signs on platforms and designated bus replacement signs will round out the experience for passengers.

Specifications

• Jumbotron – Large LED matrix display in centre of station concourse, can’t miss it
• New colour double sided displays on the platforms
• Addition of 3x “platform 10” displays for buses replacing trains – to solve a major source of customer complaints with people not knowing where to wait for their bus
• New entrance displays
• Summary displays at station entrance
• Displays up at stadium end
• Improved audio, new speakers in station area
• WiFi hearing loop system for hearing impaired
• New rack in customer kiosk housing new equipment
• All new backend software, very user friendly for Transdev operators
• System future proofed for expandability and data available for apps and website in future.