The Digital Signs Platform powers live timetable signage across the UK Capital for Transport for London

The digital signs platform captures live arrival data on more than 16,000 Bus stops across the capital, processing hundreds of updates every second via TfL’s API suite.

The digital signs platform takes this data and enables TfL’s staff to merge it with maps, bus stop iconography and third party data to create elegant, custom digital signs, uniquely tailored to each location and traveller profile.

TfL’s support team can easily create and manage digital signs, employing pre-designed sign-templates. For example, a bus station sign template enables large numbers of bus arrivals and departures to be displayed simultaneously.

Other templates include River Buses and Schools/Hospitals with new templates added as the service extends. The platform’s dashboard displays critical TfL API analytics, plus cleverly detects possible fraudulent sign usage and metrics on the sign take-up.

The platform includes an integrated email module, allowing TfL to message third party customers with details on sign set-up and trouble-shooting.

Because the signs display on a wide variety of screen sizes and browsers they are designed in such a way that they’ll work smoothly regardless of the client set-up, ensuring that there is no need for TfL or third party locations to purchase additional hardware to display their sign. Helping to ensure rapid take-up of the service.

Technically challenging, the platform needs to be able to capture live arrival data on 16,000 Bus stops, processing hundreds of updates every second via the Transport for London Countdown API.

With a scalable approach, the platform has been developed to comfortably manage tens of thousands of signs with no impact on performance. Digital Signs for Transports highly resilient solution; split across multiple servers, ensures that any server can fail without a loss in performance and, in a disaster recovery situation, the platform will fail over to another location entirely and restore in under half an hour without any human intervention.

To find out more about the platform please drop an email to discover@digital-transport-signs.com