Predictable Stop Kit

• A named contact within your organisation and your transport planning team, so we can keep you updated as the project progresses.

• Early conversations about stop locations and passenger needs, so our plans for a live trial reflect real world conditions for passengers.

• If you are preparing your Bus Network Accessibility Plan, a conversation about how the Predictable Stop Kit could help you describe, evidence and report on what your stops provide. Learn more about how PSK can help with your Bus NAP.

• Now – October 2026: we build and test the pre-demonstrator with our co-design cohort at the Sussex Innovation Centre, Brighton.

• December 2026: partners are welcome to visit the simulated stop and try the pre-demonstrator for themselves, during our second round of testing.

• December 2026 – January 2027: we evaluate everything we’ve learned and build the case and plan for a live trial.

• March 2027: planned start of a real-world trial, with committed local authority partners.

The Predictable Stop Kit is built around the social model of disability. Barriers at a public transport stop are treated as environmental and systemic, not as something wrong with the person waiting. That means the kit is designed to remove barriers from the stop itself, rather than asking disabled passengers to carry an extra device or download an app to work around them.

The Predictable Stop Kit is built to close that gap. It gives blind and partially sighted passengers reliable audio information. It gives d/Deaf and hard of hearing passengers clear visual information and induction loop or Auracast audio direct to their hearing aid. It gives neurodiverse and mobility-impaired passengers a stop that behaves the same way every time.

1. A passenger presses the tactile button, mounted in a fixed, standard position, and gets a visual confirmation and a spoken announcement: stop name, next services, route numbers, and minutes to arrival.

2. The e-paper display shows the same information visually, in a high-contrast, consistent layout, for partially sighted passengers and anyone who prefers to read it.

3. Audio can also be delivered privately over Auracast, straight to a passenger’s own hearing aid or earphones, alongside the induction loop for existing hearing aid users.

4. A Braille stop code gives blind passengers a way to confirm they are at the right stop.

5. All information is pulled from live open transport data, so it reflects what is actually happening, not a fixed timetable.

Throughout, we’re testing the Predictable Stop Kit against six success metrics developed with disabled co-designers: task completion, confidence, comprehension time, accessibility equity across different access needs, zero new barriers introduced, and information accuracy against live transport data. Together, these give us the evidence base for a live trial.

• A trial needs a realistic range of stop types in one place: rural, suburban, and central city.

• Areas with high bus use per person and a high proportion of disabled residents give us the clearest evidence of what the Predictable Stop Kit changes for passengers.

• Synergy: we are looking for areas with other accessible transport initiatives and innovations already under way.

• Where related devices are already in place, such as buttons that read out upcoming bus times, Predictable Stop Kit can be tested alongside them rather than in isolation.

See and test the pre-demonstrator

An invitation to visit the simulated stop at Sussex Innovation Centre in December, during our second round of testing, to see the Predictable Stop Kit working and try it for yourselves alongside our co-designers.

First look at the evidence

Early and direct access to the evidence we’re building through Phase 2: task completion, confidence scores, comprehension times, and information accuracy, alongside what co-designers tell us. This evidence is for your own accessibility case only, whether that’s for BSIP reporting, funding bids, or internal business cases.

A say in what gets tested

The chance to help shape our second and third build iterations. If there are specific stops, routes, or passenger concerns you want us to test against, we can factor that into the pre-demonstrator before Phase 3 begins.

Early input into site selection and requirements

If a Phase 3 trial goes ahead, we would want it in an area like yours. Getting your input now on stop types, locations, and what a future accessibility requirement in a bus service tender might look like means any future trial, and any future procurement conversation, starts from a shared understanding rather than a cold approach.

No cost to you

This project is fully funded through the ncat Scaling Innovation Programme 2, so there’s no fee and no funding commitment on your side for any of the above. That covers our costs and our co-designers’ costs, not your own staff time or travel if you visit us in Brighton. Please budget for that as you would for any other site visit. We’re not asking for a commitment to a live trial, only the chance to work with you as we build towards one.

• Every local transport authority in England must publish a Bus Network Accessibility Plan by 1 April 2027. The plan is your own assessment of how far the network lets disabled people travel independently, safely and in reasonable comfort.

• The Department for Transport guidance rates live bus information on how many senses and groups it serves. Information shown only visually is rated inadequate. Visual, audible and online information that meets minimum standards is adequate. Information tailored to different impairment groups, or co-designed, is good.

• The Predictable Stop Kit is built to score well on that scale. It gives live information visually, audibly, through an induction loop and over Auracast from one unit, shaped by co-design with disabled people. The guidance names audible departures wherever live departures are shown visually, and Auracast, as example commitments an authority could make.

• In our next build we are working towards a per-stop feature record, so you can describe what each stop provides in the wording the Bus NAP template asks for, including a status such as available now or available from a date.

• We are reporting our test results by the impairment groups the guidance uses, with the same grouping each round, so they can feed your assessment and its later reviews.

• Telemetry on announcements, button presses, display refreshes and faults, tagged with each stop code, is planned to help you monitor and report on commitments over time.