Block Viewer

What is the Block Viewer?

The Block Viewer shows you how Podaris has grouped your scheduled trips into vehicle blocks — the sequence of trips a single vehicle completes throughout the day, starting and ending a depot. It opens as a full-screen Gantt chart and gives you an at-a-glance picture of fleet utilisation, deadhead movements, and key operational metrics, all without leaving your planning environment.

Note: The Block Viewer is not a dedicated scheduling tool replacement and is a read-only visualisation. It reflects the blocks and depot assignments that Podaris has calculated from your current schedules, and will update automatically when your trips change.

Opening the Block Viewer

You can open the Block Viewer from two places:

From the Services Panel: click Blocks to open a network-wide view of all active routes.
From a route's Trips tab: click Blocks to open filtered to that route only.

What the Gantt chart shows

Each row in the chart represents a single vehicle block — one vehicle's working day. The horizontal axis shows time. Each block is broken into colour-coded segments:

Segment type	What it means
Revenue service	The vehicle is carrying passengers on a scheduled trip
Layover	Scheduled waiting time at the end of a trip before the next one departs
Deadhead	The vehicle is travelling between trips without passengers
Pull-out	The vehicle is leaving the depot at the start of its day
Pull-in	The vehicle is returning to the depot at the end of its day
Idle	The vehicle is stationary and not in revenue service

Hovering over any segment shows a tooltip with the route, pattern, trip name, departure and arrival times, and duration.

Clicking on a revenue segment opens the trip editing panel for that trip, so you can make changes without having to navigate back to find it manually.

Filters and display options

A toolbar at the top of the Block Viewer lets you narrow down what is shown and adjust how it is displayed.

Day

Select which day of the week to display blocks for. Podaris calculates blocks based on which trips are active on that day according to their calendar settings.

Color by

Switch how segments are coloured:

Route: each revenue segment is coloured by its route colour, making it easy to see how trips from different routes chain together within a block
Trip status: colours reflect the segment type (revenue, deadhead, layover, etc.) regardless of route, giving a quick read on how much time is spent in each mode

Vehicles filter

Filter blocks to show only those assigned to a specific vehicle type. Useful when you want to compare utilisation across your fleet.

Routes filter

When viewing multiple routes, a route filter appears below the toolbar. Select one or more routes to focus the chart on blocks that include trips from those routes. Segments from other routes are dimmed rather than hidden, so you can still see the full context of each block.

Depots filter

If your blocks include depot assignments, you can filter to show only blocks that start or end at specific depots.

Block Metrics

Toggle on Block Metrics to show a per-block statistics panel to the left of the Gantt rows. You can choose which metrics to display:

Metric	What it shows
Pull-out	The time the vehicle first leaves the depot
Pull-in	The time the vehicle returns to the depot
Span	Total time from pull-out to pull-in
Revenue hours	Time spent in active passenger service
Total layover	Cumulative layover time across the block
Utilisation	Revenue hours as a proportion of total span
Distance	Estimated total distance travelled (km)
Trips	Number of individual trips in the block

Click any column header to sort blocks by that metric. Click again to reverse the sort order.

Network-level statistics

The bar at the top of the Block Viewer shows summary metrics for all currently visible blocks:

PVR: Peak Vehicle Requirement: the maximum number of vehicles operating simultaneously at any point in the day
Efficiency: the proportion of total distance driven that is revenue-generating (i.e. carrying passengers), versus deadhead or depot movements
Vehicle Hours: the combined total time all vehicles are active, from pull-out to pull-in
Vehicle Distance: the total distance driven by all vehicles across the day
Avg Layover: the average proportion of each block's span that is scheduled layover time

These figures update automatically as you change filters or switch days.

Navigation

Zoom with the +/− buttons or click-and-drag horizontally to zoom into a time window. Hold the middle mouse button to pan. Scroll vertically to move through rows.

Exporting block data

To export the blocks you're viewing, click the CSV button (file-download icon) in the toolbar. Podaris downloads a CSV named after your project and day, e.g. My Transit Project - Monday (blocks).csv.

The export gives you one row per vehicle block, with each block's ID, vehicle, depot, pull-out/pull-in, service window, and revenue, layover, idle and deadhead time and distance, plus its trip count.

Note: Only the blocks currently visible are exported, so any vehicle, route, or depot filters are respected. Network-level figures (PVR, Efficiency, etc.) aren't included.

Things to keep in mind

Blocks are a planning-stage estimate. The simulator does not account for driver duties or labour rules.
If a route has conflicting depot rules (e.g. rules set at different levels that cannot all be satisfied by a single depot), a warning banner will appear at the top of the chart. This indicates that some blocks may have been routed to an unintended depot, and efficiency metrics for those blocks may be incomplete. Check the Alert Manager for more info.
The block simulation may not be 100% accurate as it uses a simplified algorithm for depot and block assignments. Use the block viewer as reference only.