253. To. Euston

Announcing the bus stops is useful if you’re in an unfamiliar part of town – I had to go deep into Hampstead Garden Suburb last weekend for business purposes and since the hinterland of scrub beyond Golders Green is entirely a mystery to me I was most thankful for the cry of “MARKET PLACE!” on the 102 else I’d probably have ended up in Edmonton, or worse.

Announcing the destination is presumably for the blind etc. (actually is there an etc.?) but its frequency is rather offputting and the volume could be lowered.

It’s still preferable, however, to the Thatcher impersonator who used to come through the tannoy at Earl’s Court tube in the eighties; if you were in the lift and the door couldn’t shut “she” would bark out “YOU ARE DELAYING THE OPERATION OF THIS LIFT! STAND! CLEAR! OF! THE! DOOOOOOOOOOORS!!” Talk about no turning back!

On reflection, high volume may be there to compensate for deafened Walkman/iPod generation(s) or to be audible even with said devices on.

The 76 has been doing it for a while. It annoyed me for a while, but I’ve learned to tune it out.

I should say I am fine with them announcing each stop in turn really, it’s just the destination reminder count that should be curtailed.

i really liked it when i was on the 253 and it went a bit wrong and the lady was just saying Hackney Central Station, Hackney Central Station, Hackney Central Station over and over again, it was like some sort of GLITCH BUS.

i don’t mind it, but then i don’t travel on busses anywhere near as frequently as i did a year ago. complaining about it existing (although not the frequency)is a bit like complaining about them removing routemasters, ie just disablist

No, no, no, cannot agree with this. I am all in favour of bus stops being read out, and destinations too, though perhaps slightly less frequently.

How bloody dare anyone say the blind or partially sighted should have to ask the driver! Don’t you think people who can’t see already have to ask for enough help during the day? Wouldn’t you be grateful for anything that aided your independence? I know I would. For shame.

In any case, drivers are often grumpy/inaudible/heavily accented and I can’t hear/understand when I ask them to let me know where I’m supposed to get off. Also you would have to sit/stand near the driver because they’re not going to shout it out for you loud enough and going by a vague “after the lights by the Somerfields” type description is fraught with potential for confusion. Maybe the volume needs tweaking, but in principle this whole scheme is a good thing. As it is on the Tube too. It’s a safety issue for nightbuses too – anything that reduces the chance of the inebriated getting off in the wrong part of town is a good thing.

This isn’t about curtailing driver/passenger interaction either; if anything a courteous hello/thanks to the driver means all the more if it is done for no other reason than to be polite.

Living in Tufnell Park and having good friends in Stamford Hill I do this journey all the time. Counting announcements will be my new way of passing the time on this route. I may report back with my findings.

But doesn’t that add to London’s secret (NOT psychogeographic) magic (cf. extended debate at beginning of The Man Who Was Thursday re. getting on an eastbound tube at Sloane Square and the implications if the next station weren’t Victoria)?

“How bloody dare anyone say the blind or partially sighted should have to ask the driver! Don’t you think people who can’t see already have to ask for enough help during the day? Wouldn’t you be grateful for anything that aided your independence? I know I would. For shame.”

For me it’s not a question of ‘why should they have to ask’ but ‘how much of a problem is it for them to ask and for the driver to answer? set against the cost of installing and maintaining annoucement systems that isn’t actually useful 95% (estimation) of the time’. I don’t think this is equivalent to the wheelchairs/pushchairs access issue which works well (provided there’s enough space on the bus in the first place). Aiding their independence is good but most passengers will ask drivers for info regarding routes now and then. As I implied above I think the system would work better for EVERYBODY if these sorts of measures could be activated only when needed. Persistent announcements for me constitute a noise pollution issue almost as bad as mobile phone music.

Re routemasters and conductors, they went hand in hand for a reason. Conductors had room to move around on them because standing room was so limited. No chance of that on the veal-cart Bendy buses during peak hours.

‘drivers are often grumpy/inaudible/heavily accented

we should not settle for this. they must be better trained and equipped to deal with passenger enquiries, which will be made by everyone from time to time.

‘reduces the chance of the inebriated getting off in the wrong part of town’

helpful maybe but hopefully they devote more time and resources to encouraging people to not become so inebriated that they find themselves in this position on a bus in the first place. but i’m saying that as someone who has only fallen asleep on a bus home ONCE (altho it was actually the Oxford Tube…yes you see where this is going…) and stumbled off a bus blind drunk maybe just a couple of times (many years ago now!). but i think when you’re that drunk most of the time you wouldn’t even understand what some disembodied digital voice is parroting at you anyway.