Real-Time Passenger Wayfinding at Canning Town PIN

TfL is considering how it may approach the procurement of any such services that may fulfil the problem statements and is therefore seeking early information from the market through the publication of this Prior information notice (PIN). The main purpose of this PIN is to establish the measure of interest in the market via a Market Sounding Questionnaire. This Problem Statement concerns Real-Time Passenger Wayfinding at Canning Town Station. Canning Town is a busy interchange between Underground, DLR and Buses, with 118,000 customers passing through the station each day. It is critical to DLR operations in the Royal Docks, with 70,000 of those customers (59%) interchanging between DLR and the Jubilee line.

The layout of the station means that DLR services operate to and from the Beckton and Woolwich branches from two different sets of platforms (the High Level - platforms 3&4, and the Low Level - platforms 1&2).

Whilst small information screens are available at certain points on the Jubilee platforms, these are not very prominent and hard to read. They list departures in time order, meaning that passengers must go through this process:

• Work out which train destination they want for the station they are travelling to by looking at line diagrams or network maps

• Consult the screen to find the next departure with its platform number

• Go back to the static signage to try to work out where the stated platform is

The volume of passengers makes it hard for people to stop and carry out this thought process.

The result is that whilst 68% of people arriving on DLR use the High-Level platforms (as expected for where the train services using those platforms come from), a much higher 83% of people leaving the station on DLR use the High-Level platforms. This causes a mismatch between demand and capacity on DLR services leaving Canning Town, with trains originating at Bank, and passing through the High-Level platforms, picking up a disproportionate share of boarders at Canning Town.

Main objectives:

• Ensure that demand for eastbound DLR services at Canning Town is matched effectively to capacity

Additional objectives:

• Reduce customer journey times by reducing the amount of time they spend at Canning Town station

• Reduce congestion at Canning Town station

• Reduce the stress associated with interchanging at Canning Town